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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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THREE PEACE CONGRESSES 

OF THE 

NINETEENTH CENTURY 

BY 

CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN 

WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 

ROBERT HOWARD LORD 



CLAIMANTS TO 
CONSTANTINOPLE 

BY 

ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE 




CAMBRIDGE 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
Oxford University Press 

1917 



-33 3 ^3 
J5 



COPYRIGHT, 1917 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 



APR 20 1917 

©3I.A4G2115 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 



PREFACE 

THE essays included in this volume were 
written at the request of the programme 
committee of the American Historical Association. 
They were presented at the annual meeting held 
in Cincinnati during the closing days of 1916. 
One session was devoted to the " Great Peace 
Congresses of the Nineteenth Century " — Vienna, 
Paris, and Berlin — and with these three of the 
essays deal. Another session was given to the 
history of " Mediaeval and Modern Constanti- 
nople," and the fourth essay discusses the subject 
from the point of view of the geographical position 
of the city and the historic claims which successive 
national states have made upon it. 

The fall of 1916 may one day be chiefly remem- 
bered as the time when rumors of a coming peace 
first became something more than disguised expres- 
sions of the desire for the end of a terrible tragedy. 
Any attempt to forecast the terms still seemed 
futile, because it was certain that these would be 
defined by the sword or by the last fifty million 
pounds sterling. There were subjects, however, 
connected with the peace which the historian 



iv PREFACE 

might consider with advantage. It was probable 
that when peace should come, whether within a 
few weeks or after many months of waiting, the 
details of the settlement would have to be worked 
out in a conference or congress. Quite naturally 
students of history turned to the records of the 
Congress of Vienna, the Congress of Paris, and the 
Congress of Berlin, with questions like these: 
How have such peace congresses been organized ? 
Who were the outstanding personalities ? Were 
the conclusions the result of real conferences or of 
secret understandings, or, again, of the skilful 
manoeuvres of master diplomats ? 

The aim of the session was not to discuss specific 
decisions of any one of the three congresses, 
although the settlements effected by the Congress 
of Paris, and yet more those made by the Congress 
of Berlin, are closely related to the events that led 
to the present war, and although some of the ques- 
tions raised on these occasions must be answered 
afresh in the next peace congress. In examining 
the mode of action of such congresses, the study of 
the Congress of Vienna is quite as pertinent as the 
study of its successors. Indeed, the difficulties 
which confronted the negotiators at Vienna seem 
altogether akin to those which will probably 
trouble the new congress, unless peace should be 
made on the basis of a clear return to the status quo 



PREFACE v 

ante. In 1814, as now, all the great and several of 
the minor European powers were involved, and 
the interests of allied states were in serious conflict. 
And yet a study of the characteristics of all three 
congresses will give us a clearer image of the 
physiognomy of such bodies. 

It is to history also that we must turn for the 
background of the problem of Constantinople, the 
most important single question to which the war 
must furnish an answer. This lends special inter- 
est to the essay which shows the various forms 
the answer has taken since the Middle Ages, as 
the racial tides have ebbed and flowed and as 
boundary lines have been drawn and obliterated. 
The more such elements are considered the more 
baffling the question becomes. This point receives 
new emphasis from the fact that certain statesmen 
are now trying to accomplish what their prede- 
cessors moved heaven and earth to prevent. 

Henry Eldridge Bourne. 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

By CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN 

T SHALL not attempt in this paper to appraise 
** once more the Congress of Vienna, to discuss 
anew the merits of the questions that came before 
it or the merits of its solutions. I shall merely 
attempt, in accordance with the suggestion of the 
Committee on Programme, to describe the manner 
in which the Congress approached its problems, 
the way in which it handled its business, its mode 
of organization, its methods of work, the machinery 
it employed in the discharge of its highly compli- 
cated task, which was the liquidation of Europe 
after a period of unexampled wars. 

The Congress that met in Vienna in the fall of 
1814 was composed of the most illustrious person- 
ages in Europe, with one significant exception, that 
of the Man of Elba, who was not invited or ex- 
pected and yet whose animating personality was 
the direct cause of this mobilization of the world's 
celebrities. Such a personnel craved diversion, and 
the amusements of this Congress have become 
legendary and have been embalmed in epigram. 
Every day had its review, its hunt, its sleighing 
party, its dinners, its gala performances at the 
theatres, its routs and balls and masquerades. The 
Prince de Ligne's epigram about the Congress 



4 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

which could dance but not advance every one will 
recall. " The emperors dance," wrote another, 
"the kings dance, Metternich dances, Castlereagh 
dances. Only the Prince de Talleyrand does not 
dance," having a club foot. " He plays whist." 
The work of the Congress was repeatedly and 
seriously interrupted by this riot of pleasure. The 
Prince de Ligne, dying in the midst of all this 
revelry, was fully conscious of the social utility of 
the demise of so distinguished a person as himself 
and said gaily, in the authentic spirit of the Old 
Regime: " I am preparing for the members of the 
Congress a new amusement; the obsequies of a 
Field Marshal, a Cavalier of the Golden Fleece." 
Many have died that the state might live. It 
was reserved for the Prince to find a new use for 
adversity, a new fillip for satiety. 

But what was to be the relationship of this glit- 
tering gathering, issued as it were from the chaste 
pages of the Almanack de Gotha, to the business 
in hand ? That business was the distribution of the 
spoils of victory, the rending of Napoleon's mantle, 
his coat of many colors. The task was the redraw- 
ing of the political map of Europe. To be able to 
understand the mode of operations of the Congress 
of Vienna we must keep in mind three or four facts 
of the situation. One was the great prominence of 
the four allies, the allies of Chaumont, who had 
constituted the essential body of the Great Coali- 
tion before which Napoleon had been forced to 
strike arms. These were the Four of whom every- 
one was to speak for many months, Russia, Prus- 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 5 

sia, Austria, and England. Was their role to be as 
great in the diplomatic tournament of Vienna as it 
had been on the battle fields of Europe ? 

Another fact to be remembered is this, that the 
Congress of Vienna was not a peace congress. 
Peace had been concluded before ever that Con- 
gress met. Peace was the work of the Treaty of 
Paris of May 30, 1814. That treaty was, however, 
signed, not by four Powers, but by eight. For in 
addition to the four already mentioned the peace of 
Paris was signed by Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and 
France. That treaty settled some things and 
merely outlined the settlement of others. Its thirty- 
second article provided for a future congress to pass 
upon the many items of unfinished business which 
the treaty, necessarily concluded in haste, could 
not determine. Article XXXII reads as follows: 
"All the powers engaged on either side- in the pres- 
ent war shall, within the space of two months, 
send plenipotentiaries to Vienna to settle at a gen- 
eral Congress the arrangements which are to 
complete the provisions of the present treaty." 

This was the only official call the Congress of 
Vienna ever had. Did it mean that the future of 
Europe was to be determined, not by the Four, 
nor yet by the Eight who were signatories of the 
Treaty of Paris and who were issuing the call, but 
by collective Europe, that is by the plenipoten- 
tiaries of all the powers engaged in the Napoleonic 
wars, which were many more than four or eight ? 
Was Europe to be regulated by a narrow concert, 
or by a broader concert, or by a broader one still by 



6 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

the admission to full rights of participation of all 
the states that had shared in the late war ? Nobody 
knew — unless it was the Four. The matter was 
open for conjecture. No further summons was 
issued, no more detailed statement was ever sent 
forth as to the composition of the Congress, as to its 
organization, or its mode of procedure. A general 
rendezvous had been given for two months hence 
at Vienna. That was the sole and the highly insuffi- 
cient preparation for this momentous meeting. 

What, therefore, was not settled before the con- 
vening of the Congress would have to be deter- 
mined after it convened. 

What happened was enlightening, if not gen- 
erally pleasing. Although the Congress had been 
postponed during the summer until the first of 
October in order to enable the Tsar to visit Russia, 
the plenipotentiaries of the four allied nations 
arrived in Vienna toward the middle of September, 
and from the sixteenth onward they held meetings 
with each other. On the twenty-second they 
decided upon the general method of procedure at 
the Congress. A commission consisting of the 
representatives of the Four, and of France and 
Spain in addition, was to prepare the work on all 
matters of general European concern; and a com- 
mission of five leading German states, Austria, 
Prussia, Wiirtemberg, Baden, and Hanover, and 
excluding Saxony, was to prepare the proposed 
federal constitution for Germany. The Four also 
signed a protocol to the effect that they intended 
to settle among themselves the distribution of the *> 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 7 

Polisbj Gejrmanj.jn^Jialij^teCT 
by Napoleon and compjjsi ng t hirty-t wo mil lions 
of people, tEemain business in fact of the Congress; 
that only after having agreed among themselves 
would they communicate their decisions to France 
and Spain, and only then would they listen to any 
suggestions or objections from those two. 

It is to be noted that thus not only were two of 
the eight signers of the Treaty of Paris, Portugal 
and Sweden, eliminated forthwith from participa- 
tion in the chief work of the Congress which they 
had joined in calling, that not only were two others 
of its signatories, France and Spain, assigned to a 
very humble role, but that all the other powers of 
Europe were to be entirely ignored. 

Such was the beginning of the organization, such 
the initial step in procedure of the Congress of 
Vienna. The vast and varied diplomatic nebulae 
that floated over the blue Danube were concen- 
trating into four bright, particular stars, with two 
dead, cold moons as satellites which were to be 
allowed to receive a little reflected light in the 
course of their gyrations. This simplified cosmog- 
ony would at least be satisfactory to its creators. 
Whether it would be so to all the other star dust 
scattered through the firmament remained to be 
seen. Doubt on this point was quite permissible. 

Such was the situation, known, however, only to 
the Four, when Talleyrand reached Vienna, on Sep- 
tember 24. He suspected, long before he knew, 
that the allies would seek to prevent France from 
sitting in the meetings that were to decide the 



8 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

weighty matters of the day. But he had no notion 
of acquiescing in any such arrangement. As he 
himself expressed it, he was " both able and knew 
how to sit." But how to make the lordly tetrarchy 
admit him to the room and give him a seat was a 
problem. His treatment of it was a masterpiece of 
diplomatic art. 

As the opening of the Congress had been publicly 
announced for October first, it was considered 
necessary to convoke the signers of the Treaty of 
Paris, who had said in that treaty that there would 
be a Congress. Metternich accordingly invited 
them to meet at his house on September 30. But 
he invited, not the Eight who had signed the 
Treaty, but only six of them, leaving out Portugal 
and Sweden. This preparatory meeting was quite 
sensational and had its influence upon the course of 
the Congress. Talleyrand needed all his aplomb 
(and he had it all) . No sooner was he seated — 
and he took particular pains to take a good seat 
near the head of the table — than he supported a 
protest which Portugal had just sent in against the 
failure to ask her to the conference, she being one 
of the signers of the Treaty of Paris. The Swedish 
plenipotentiary had not yet arrived in Vienna and 
was therefore not in a position to protest. 

After giving this slight scratch, Talleyrand 
rested. ' The object of today's conference," said 
Lord Castlereagh, addressing Talleyrand, "is to 
make you acquainted with what the four Courts 
have done since we have been here." Then, ad- 
dressing Metternich, Castlereagh said: " You have 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 9 

the protocol." " M. de Metternich then handed 
me a paper," writes Talleyrand to Louis XVIII, 
" signed by him, Count Nesselrode, Lord Castle- 
reagh, and Prince Hardenberg." In this protocol 
the word 'allies' occurred in every paragraph. 
" I pointed out the word, and said that the use of 
it placed me under the necessity of asking where 
we were, whether we were still at Chaumont or at 
Laon, whether peace had not been made, whether 
there was any quarrel, and with whom." * "Allies," 
continued Talleyrand, "allies against whom? Not 
against Napoleon ? He is on the island of Elba. 
Surely not against the king of France? He is a 
guarantor of the duration of the peace. Gentlemen, 
let us speak frankly. If there are still Allied Powers 
then I am an intruder here." 2 

They answered that they did not insist upon the 
word, that they had only employed it for brevity's 
sake. On which Talleyrand impressed upon them 
that, however valuable brevity might be, it ought 
not to be purchased at the expense of accuracy. 
He added that anything that had been done be- 
tween May 30, when by the Treaty of Paris the 
Congress had been announced, and October first, 
when it ought to meet, was foreign to him and did 
not exist for him. 

The blighting breath of this caustic criticism 
withered the flowering protocol and any other 

1 Pallain, The Correspondence of Talleyrand and Louis XV III 
(authorized American ed., 1881), Letter of October 4, 1814. 

2 Sorel, L'Europe et la Revolution Franqaise, pt. viii (5th ed., 1904), 
p. 385. 



10 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

arrangements that the Four might have concluded 
between the two terminal dates. The answer of 
the plenipotentiaries was, says Talleyrand, " that 
they cared so little for the paper in question, that 
they asked nothing better than to withdraw it . . . 
M. de Metternich laid it aside, and there was no 
more about it." 

After having abandoned this document, the Four 
produced another, providing that, if France and 
Spain should agree with them, then two committees 
should be appointed to consider and determine 
the subjects before the Congress, and that after 
the committees had completed their tasks the 
Congress should then be assembled for the first 
time and the whole submitted to its sanction. 

The purpose and obvious effect of this plan was 
to render the Four masters of the Congress. France 
and Spain would never be more than two to four, 
even if they were agreed on everything. Talley- 
rand immediately expressed his opinion, to the 
effect that the idea of arranging everything before 
convening the Congress was a novel one to him, 
that they proposed to finish where he had thought 
it necessary to begin, that probably the power 
which it was proposed to confer upon the Six could 
not be given to them except by the Congress as a 
whole ; and he asked why the Congress could not 
be assembled at once, what were the difficulties in 
the way, a question that led to a general and some- 
what testy conversation. Talleyrand was sup- 
ported throughout by Labrador, the representative 
of Spain. 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 11 

After this conversation a two days' adjournment 
was taken. ' The intervention of Talleyrand and 
of Labrador," wrote Friedrich Gentz in his diary, 
" has frightfully deranged our plans. They have 
protested against the form we have adopted. They 
lectured us well for two hours. It was a scene that 
I shall never forget." * 

Having annoyed his fellow diplomatists suffi- 
ciently in the famous conference, Talleyrand pro- 
ceeded to annoy them still more by sending to each 
of the five on the following day a formal note to the 
effect that in his opinion the eight powers which 
had signed the Treaty of Paris were competent to 
prepare the preliminary programme of the Congress 
and to suggest to it the committees that it would 
be desirable to have, but that their competence did 
not extend any further; "that not being the Con- 
gress, but only a portion of the Congress, to attri- 
bute to themselves a power which could only 
belong to the entire Congress would be a usurpa- 
tion; . . . that the difficulty which attended the 
meeting of the Congress was not of a nature to 
diminish with time;" that, in short, "the Eight 
Powers should address themselves without delay 
to the preliminary questions to be decided by the 
Congress, so that it might be promptly called 
together, and those questions submitted to it." 2 

The plenipotentiaries of the Four at once fell 
upon Talleyrand with reproaches for having sent 
the note to them. They would have preferred 

1 Gentz, Tagebiicher, i, p. 312. 

2 Pallain, Letter of October 4, 1814. 



12 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

that the conference should be one of conversations 
merely, of which no trace would remain. They 
criticized especially his giving a formal and official 
character to the proceedings of the session by 
signing the note. Moreover, a note requires an 
answer. 

To these criticisms " I replied," says the bland 
ex-bishop, " that, as they wrote and signed 
amongst themselves, I thought that I too must 
write and sign. I concluded from this that my 
note had embarrassed them not a little." 

His conclusion was correct. 

On October ^; there was another conference with 
Metternich, at which Metternich asked Talleyrand 
to withdraw his note, and insinuated once more 
that everything ought to be regulated by the Four. 
" I replied that I could not. ' Then we must 
answer you,' said M. de Metternich to me. ' If 
you will kindly do so,' I replied. 'I should,' he 
resumed, 'be of opinion that we ought to settle 
our affairs by ourselves, meaning by us the Four 
Courts.' I answered unhesitatingly, 'If you take 
the question that way, I am altogether your man; 
I am quite ready, and ask nothing better.' 'What 
do you mean?' said he. 'This; it is very simple,' 
I replied : ' I shall take no more part in your con- 
ferences ; I shall be nothing here but a member of 
the Congress, and I shall wait until it is opened.' 
. . . 'How can the Congress be assembled,' said M. 
de Metternich, 'when nothing is ready to lay before 
it?' 'Well, then,' I replied, to show that I did not 
wish to make difficulties, and was prepared to agree 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 13 

to anything that did not clash with the principles 
from which I could not depart, 'since nothing is 
ready as yet for the opening of the Congress . . . 
let it be put off for a fortnight or three weeks. I 
consent to that, but on two conditions : one is that 
you summon it for a fixed day; the other is that 
in the note of convocation you lay down the rule 
for admission to it." x 

A few days later Gentz, Metternich's right-hand 
man, succeeded in composing a draft convoking 
the Congress for November 1. This draft was in 
most respects similar to that which Talleyrand 
had suggested. The representatives of the Six 
Powers met on October 8, at Metternich's house, 
to consider it. Talleyrand accepted Gentz's plan 
for the opening of the Congress, and also the idea 
of preparatory conferences to be held before the 
opening — since he was now sure of admission him- 
self and since now the Four renounced the right to 
settle everything among themselves alone. But 
he demanded that at the point where it was 
stated that the opening of the Congress should 
occur November 1, the following words should be 
added: "and shall then be conducted in conform- 
ity with the principles of public law." This pro- 
position aroused a tempest which shows us the 
spirit in which these men of the Congress ap- 
proached their work. " At these words," wrote 
Talleyrand, " a tumult of which it is difficult to 
form an idea arose. Prince Hardenberg, standing 
up, with his clenched hands on the table in an 

1 Pallain, Letter of October 9, 1814. 



14 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

almost threatening attitude, and shouting, as those 
who are afflicted with deafness so often do, said, in 
stuttering agitation, ' No, sir, public law is a use- 
less phrase. Why say that we shall act according 
to public law ? That goes without saying.' I 
replied: ' If it goes without saying, it will go even 
better, if said.' M. Humboldt exclaimed: ' What 
has public law to do here?' 'This,' I answered: 
' that it sends you here,' " by which Talleyrand 
delicately referred to the fact that if it had not 
been for what remained of respect for public law 
Prussia would have been completely effaced from 
the map of Europe at Tilsit. 1 

After this conference neither the Six nor the 
Eight met for some time. The Four were trying, 
not in formal meetings, but by negotiation with 
each other, to arrange the division of Poland and 
Saxony, the thorniest crux of all the affairs that 
would have to be settled. But instead of attaining 
a solution, they only found their relations becoming 
more and more suspicious and strained. Even the 
sole committee which had thus far been instituted, 
that for preparing a constitution for Germany, a 
committee, as we have seen, appointed by the Four, 
broke up after a few sessions because of a split 
among its members over this all-determining ques- 
tion. The representatives of Bavaria and Wlir- 
temberg declined to have anything to do with the 
committee until the preservation of Saxony was 
assured. As a result no more sessions of the Ger- 

1 Pallain, Letter of October 9, 1814; Broglie, MSmoires du Prince 
de Talleyrand, ii, pp. 341-347. 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 15 

man Committee were held for five months, and 
when they were finally resumed it was under very 
changed conditions. 

The Congress was having notable difficulty in 
getting under way. It was drifting and drifting 
toward rocks. Everyone was apprehensive. Was 
Europe about to be duped once more ? To reas- 
sure her it was necessary, whether they wished it 
or not, for the Powers to adopt some definite mode 
of procedure for the Congress. All that had been 
done thus far had been to extract from the Six a 
manifesto convoking it and a promise that, when 
convened, it should act in accordance with public 
law. Meanwhile November was steadily approach- 
ing, when, according to announcement, the Con- 
gress was to be opened. On October 30, the 
representatives of the Eight met at Metternich's 
house. They elected Metternich president and 
Gentz secretary, and they chose by lot a committee 
on credentials, consisting of the representatives of 
England, Russia, and Prussia. On November 1, 
a public declaration was made that the Committee 
on Credentials would meet on November 3, and 
that after the completion of its work the Commit- 
tee of the Eight would formulate proposals for the 
further progress of the Congress. 

But November came and went, as did six other 
successive months, and the Congress was not 
opened. In fact it was never opened. In fact 
there was no Congress — there was simply a col- 
lection of negotiators of every grade, resident for 
the time being in the city of Vienna. There was 



16 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

never any verification of credentials, never any 
official and authoritative list of members. The 
members of this imaginary Congress never met 
together in the same room. When historians speak 
of Metternich as president of the Congress of 
Vienna and Gentz as its secretary, they use lan- 
guage inaccurately. They were president and 
secretary of the Committee of the Eight Powers 
which had signed the Treaty of Paris, nothing 
more. No plenary session was ever held. 

Yet the work for which these men had come 
together was gradually accomplished. They did 
not assemble day after day and deliberate upon 
the many problems pressing for solution. Indeed, 
as has been said, they never once assembled. But 
during these months from September to June a 
very large number of treaties were made between 
the various states, and these were brought together 
in their essential features.in the Final Act of June 9, 
which was hurriedly patched together a few days 
before the battle of Waterloo. Everything was 
arranged outside, in the intimate interviews of 
sovereigns and diplomats, and in the special com- 
mittees that were in one way and another gradually 
appointed. 

Of organization, then, according to the modern 
idea of an international assembly, there was, in the 
case of the Congress of Vienna, strictly speaking, 
no trace. There was nothing in its method of dis- 
cussing and settling questions that differentiated 
its procedure from ordinary diplomatic negotia- 
tions between nations, except the proximity of the 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 17 

negotiators. At one of the sessions of the Eight 
Powers, Metternich declared that the Congress 
"was not a congress; that its opening was not, 
properly speaking, an opening at all; that the 
commissions were not commissions; that in the 
assembly of the powers at Vienna the only advan- 
tage they had to note was that of a Europe with- 
out distances." 1 

The negotiations carried on at Vienna by this 
Europe from which distance had been eliminated 
were long and exceedingly complicated. In the 
course of them we encounter meetings of the Four, 
of the Six, of the Eight. But the really dominating 
group was neither of these but was the Committee 
of the Five. In other words, the Four who had 
wished and intended to do everything without 
France found that they were unable to do anything 
without her. They were obliged in the end, al- 
though most reluctantly, to admit her formally 
even to their sessions on the Saxon-Polish ques- 
tions. Even after these were settled the Committee 
of the Five absorbed all important matters, and 
was, in the words of Friedrich Gentz, till the last 
moment " the real and only Congress." And the 
reason was that there were five Great Powers 
in Europe and no more. The map of Europe was 
redrawn by them because they had the men and 
the resources, in other words, force. As for the 
rest, the minor and secondary powers, they were 
nowhere, they flitted ineffectually in the dismal, 
dreary, outer limbo of the neglected. 

1 Memoirs of Talleyrand (English translation, 1891-92), ii, p. 295. 



18 THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 

When on June 9, 1815, the plenipotentiaries of 
the Eight Powers, signatories of the Treaty of 
Paris, were convened for the purpose of formally 
approving the Final Act of the Congress, Labrador, 
the Spanish representative, refused to sign, giving 
as his reasons that only a small proportion of the 
subjects dealt with in the Final Act had ever been 
reported in the sittings of the Committee of the 
Eight, and that a fraction of these Powers ought 
not to be permitted to settle the affairs of all 
Europe, merely summoning the rest to accord or 
refuse their signatures. This was practically the 
same idea as that of Hans von Gagern, represent- 
ing the Netherlands, who, expressing his dissatis- 
faction with the decision concerning that country, 
and being informed by Wellington that it had been 
made by 'the Great Powers,' retorted that "of 
this newly invented term, 'the Great Powers,' he 
knew neither the precise import nor the intention." 
If this was Gagern's condition, it behooved him, as 
a practical diplomat, involved in the high intrigu- 
ing of the European stage, speedily to learn the 
new terminology. For the Congress of Vienna, by 
its conduct and procedure, proved, beyond the 
possibility of doubt or cavil, that the settlement of 
the affairs of Europe belonged to the Great Powers, 
and that the other states had only to decide 
whether they would accept such settlement or not. 
And if they would not, what of it ? was manifestly 
the thought in the mind of the predominating 
pentarchy. 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 19 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Kluber, J. L., ed. Aden des Wiener Congresses. 2d ed. 

Erlangen, 1817-35. 8 vols, and supplement. 
British and Foreign State Papers. 
Angeberg, Comte d' [pseud, for L. Chodzko]. Le 

Congres de Vienne. Paris, 1864. 2 vols. 
Castlereagh, R. Stewart, Lord. Memoirs and Corre- 
spondence. London, 1848-53. 12 vols. 
Gentz, F. von. Tagebucher. Leipzig, 1873-74. 4 vols. 
La Garde-Chambonas, Comte A. de. Souvenirs du 

Congres de Vienne. Paris, 1901. Also in English 

translation. 
Metternich-Winneburg, C. W. N. L., Prince. Me- 

moires. Paris, 1880-84. 8 vols. Also in English 

translation. 
Miinster, G. H., Count. Politische Skizzen uber die 

Lage Europas 1814-67. Leipzig, 1867. Also in 

English translation. 
Pallain, G. Correspondance inedite de Talleyrand et du 

roi Louis XVIII. Paris, 1881. Also in English trans- 
lation. 
Talleyrand-Perigord, C. M. de, Prince de Benevent. 

Memoires. Paris, 1891-92. 5 vols. Also in English 

translation. 
Wellington, Field Marshal the Duke of. Dispatches. 

London, 1837-39. 12 vols. 
See also the accounts in Thiers, Sorel, Hausser {Deutsche 

Geschichte), and Bernhardi (Geschichte Russlands). 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

By WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 

THE watchword of the Congress of Vienna was 
' legitimacy.' The envoys of the Powers 
labored first to punish France, whom they regarded 
as the hotbed of revolution, the enemy of mankind 
and the cause of the wars which had devastated 
Europe for over twenty years. They deprived her 
of her territorial conquests, put a ban on the Bona- 
partes, recalled the Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, 
and trusted to the natural numbing quality of re- 
action to enervate, and so to undo, the spirit of 
liberty which caused the Revolution. The spirit 
with which they intended to replace it, not only 
in France but throughout the world, was that of 
legitimacy — a mouth-filling word whose meaning 
varied according to the greed of those who used it. 
In theory, it required that governments and dy- 
nasties should be restored to their condition before 
the Revolution. In practice, however, the large 
Powers helped themselves to such parts of the 
small states as they coveted: thus, Prussia got 
half of Saxony, Austria took northern Italy and 
Illyria; Russia annexed the grand duchy of War- 
saw. But when once the spoils had been assigned 
and assimilated, the spirit of legitimacy, like a 
fixative spray, held together the members of the 
revived old regime. 



24 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

Restoration, they called this process, and many 
of the monarchs and their ministers, and the privi- 
leged classes with whose interests their own were 
interlocked, sincerely believed that the old could 
be restored, and that, with vigilance, it could be 
protected indefinitely against change, especially 
against any maniacal outburst such as had fol- 
lowed the French groping towards liberty and 
social justice in 1789. This creed the diplomats 
at Vienna wrote for exhausted Europe; and they 
added postscripts to it in the second Treaty of Paris 
and in the mystical pact of the Holy Alliance. 

Forty years passed, before the masters of Europe 
assembled in another congress to frame another 
international agreement: for in spite of the prin- 
ciple of legitimacy, in spite also of reaction 
carried to almost incredible excesses, change had 
crept in and undermined the European system 
which Metternich constructed at Vienna. The 
revolutions of 1848 exploded — one might sup- 
pose forever — the delusion that any human com- 
pact or institution can escape the action of change, 
that is, of evolution. 

The immediate origin of the Congress of 1856 
was the Crimean War — a venture entered upon 
by France and England to protect Turkey from 
the encroachments of Russia. To keep Russia out 
of the Mediterranean had been for a long time the 
pet monomania of English statesmen, and they 
were glad enough to find in the French emperor, 
Napoleon III, an ally who would fight their battles 
with them. The direct interests of France did not 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 25 

call her to make war in behalf of the Sultan and of 
England, but the purposes of Napoleon 111 did. 
He — the product of revolution, the embodied 
denial of legitimacy — could have no better 
sponsor among the legitimate governments of 
Europe than the British government and Queen 
Victoria. Her personal character was so highly 
respected, that approval by her would have sufficed 
to disinfect, and to restore to decent society, even 
so great a rascal as Victor Hugo and King lake 
regarded Louis Napoleon. Besides the very evi- 
dent desirability of appearing as the accepted ally 
of England as a means of personal rehabilitation, 
the French emperor had other reasons for embark- 
ing on the Crimean War. A Napoleon must main- 
tain the military prestige of the Great Napoleon. 
The uncle had failed to defeat Russia; the putative 
nephew would therefore win all the greater 
renown if he succeeded where his uncle failed. 
England had sworn eternal hostility to the Great 
Napoleon, and through her invincible tenacity, 
having supported coalition after coalition against 
him for twenty years, she had crushed him at 
Waterloo. For Napoleon HI to use England as a 
tool for humbling Russia, would be in a sense to 
overcome England. 

The Anglo-French allies invaded the Crimea in 
September, 1854, they fought the battles of the 
Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman that autumn, and 
invested Sebastopol. During the winter they died 
like flies of disease, and they succeeded in taking 
Sebastopol only on September 8, 1855. Then 



26 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

Napoleon was ready to stop. The adventure had 
cost far more than he expected, his people were 
murmuring, and he knew that further prestige must 
be bought at higher rates. England — or, at least, 
Queen Victoria and the Court — on the other 
hand, desired to go on. The campaign had brought 
Britain so little glory that they wished for an 
opportunity to redeem British reputation. 

France, however, and some of the neutral powers 
were determined on peace. Austria, who had 
refused to join the allies in their offensive war, 
nevertheless had favored them rather than Russia, 
and she drew up — with France's connivance — 
an ultimatum proposing to Russia that a peace 
congress should be held. The 'Four Points' of 
the ultimatum referred (1) to the Danubian prin- 
cipalities and Russian protectorate. (2) To the 
freedom of the Danube. (3) To the neutralization 
of the Black Sea. (4) To the rights and protection 
of the Christian subjects of the Porte. 1 Russia 
consented — reluctantly; England agreed — still 
more reluctantly. 

The parties to the Congress fixed on Paris for 
its place and February 25, 1856, for its opening. 
A strong pro-Russian sentiment prevailed there, 
even among high French officials, but as Lord 
Clarendon, the British foreign secretary, wrote 
the queen, it would greatly aid them to have Lord 
Cowley, the British ambassador to France, on the 
spot, and the French emperor, on whom the Eng- 
lish must rely, within easy reach. Clarendon 

1 Text in Gourdon, Congres de Paris, pp. 344-346. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 27 

rightly foresaw that the emperor would exert a 
controlling influence over the proceedings. 

To be on the ground early, Clarendon arrived in 
Paris on February 17 — but the Russians had pre- 
ceded him — and that evening he dined at the 
Tuileries. He made it his business to control the 
controller of the Congress. The emperor listened 
sympathetically, professed the utmost concern and 
desire that the Anglo-French alliance should not 
be broken, and spoke with true French gallantry 
of the charming letter the queen had sent him. A 
few days' orientation, however, convinced Claren- 
don that the emperor stood almost alone, the mass 
of opinion among French politicians and publicists, 
of the Bourse and of the Court, being rather in 
favor of treating the Russians gently. 

On the appointed day the members of the Con- 
gress met at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They 
came in their street clothes; Cavour and Villa- 
marina were first — punctual to the minute. The 
others soon followed and assembled in the Hall of 
the Ambassadors, where full length portraits of 
Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie looked down 
on them from the walls, and a bust of Napoleon I, 
as of the genius of the place, seemed to preside from 
one of the mantelpieces. At the great round table, 
covered with green velvet, were placed twelve arm- 
chairs, and nearby stood an oblong table for the 
secretary. In adjoining rooms, the envoys could 
take coffee or tea, or could walk about and smoke, 
or otherwise enjoy a respite from the strain of 
business. 



28 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

On motion of Count Buol, Count Walewski, the 
French foreign minister, was unanimously chosen 
president of the Congress — an obviously proper 
choice, since the Congress was to sit in the French 
capital. On Walewski's suggestion, Count Bene- 
detti served as general secretary and protocolist. 
Having pledged themselves to absolute secrecy, 
the envoys arranged to meet every other day, 
usually in the afternoon, 1 and they accepted the 
protocol of the 'Four Points,' signed at Vienna on 
February 1, as the basis of their discussion. Their 
first important act was to conclude an armistice, 
to last until March 31, or during the sitting of the 
Congress. 

To obviate sensitiveness over precedence, the 
envoys sat round the green table in the alphabetical 
order in French 2 of the countries they represented. 
In 1856, they were a distinguished group of men, al- 
though few of them are now remembered, and only 
one ranks among the world's master statesmen. 

The president, Count Alexander Colonna Walew- 
ski, was the illegitimate son of Napoleon I and of 
the Polish Countess Walewska. Like other Napo- 
leonids, he emerged from obscurity when Louis 
Napoleon became president, and rose by rapid 
promotion from small diplomatic posts to be 
ambassador at London. Having negotiated the 
alliance between England and France, he returned 

1 This schedule was not carried out. Sometimes, the meetings 
came every day; sometimes, two or three days intervened. 

2 Autriche, France, Grande Bretagne, Russie, Sardaigne (Pied- 
mont), Turquie. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 29 

to Paris to be minister of foreign affairs. He 
carried on an underhand policy, conflicting with 
that of the emperor; but when brought to book, 
he did the emperor's bidding. At the Congress, 
he posed as the arbiter of the French decision, but 
he fooled nobody. A mediocre man, like most of 
the accomplices of the coup d'etat, he had the art 
of getting on, and like them he was popularly 
believed to use his official knowledge in speculating 
on the stock market — a suspicion which the 
historian will find it as easy to believe as it is hard 
to verify. 

Baron Bourqueney, Walewski's colleague, had 
been ambassador at Vienna since 1853. As he be- 
longed to the old nobility, the upstart Emperor 
repaid his loyalty by pushing him to the front. So 
far as appears, however, he possessed only mediocre 
talents as a diplomat; and his infatuation for 
Hapsburg policies and for Viennese society caused 
him to be called 'more Austrian than the Aus- 
trians.' 

England, on the other hand, sent two really 
strong representatives. First, George William 
Villiers, the fourth Earl of Clarendon, foreign 
secretary, experienced in diplomacy, on most 
occasions clear-headed and far-seeing, lacking only 
the gift of party command in order to reach the 
premiership, but fully equal, as it seems to me, to 
Palmerston and Lord John Russell in his mastery 
of international relations. The grand manner, 
which he came by naturally, added impressiveness 
to his personal intercourse. He was easily the fore- 



30 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

most envoy at the Congress, which he attended 
unwillingly, as he believed that the terms to be won 
could not possibly satisfy the English. " The nego- 
tiations," he wrote Henry Reeve, " must be the 
grave of the negotiators' reputation." 

His second, Lord Cowley, was also a British 
thoroughbred, the nephew of the Duke of Welling- 
ton. Having begun his diplomatic career at the 
age of twenty, he had reached the crowning posi- 
tion — the Paris embassy — in 1852, and had won 
the emperor's esteem, if not his confidence: for 
nobody dares say in whom Napoleon III really 
confided. 

Of the Austrians, Count Buol-Schauenstein, 
premier and minister of foreign affairs, was a typ- 
ical Teuton, arrogant, mannerless, and haughty, 
who knew so little of human nature that he sup- 
posed that other men are conciliated by cuffs and 
condescension. Bismarck, who knew him, summed 
him up in a sentence: " If I could be as great for a 
single hour as Buol thinks he is all the time, I 
should establish my glory forever before God and 
man." Although Austria had played an inglorious, 
if not discreditable, part during the Crimean War, 
satisfying neither Russia nor the allies, Buol acted 
as if the Congress existed simply to advance Aus- 
trian interests. " To listen to Buol," Orloff 
remarked to Cavour, " you would suppose that 
the Austrians had taken Sebastopol." In addition 
to his offensive haughtiness, his reputation for 
slyness and insincerity made him the least popular 
of the members of the Congress. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 31 

His companion, Count Alexander Hiibner, Aus- 
tria's ambassador at Paris, was more than a 
routine diplomat, but in no sense a great person- 
age. He was careful, tenacious, correct, and very 
official, and although he did not lose his temper — 
as Buol sometimes did — he took little pains to 
disguise the fact that he represented 'the highest 
Court in the world.' 

The Russian chief was Count Orloff, the oldest 
of all the plenipotentiaries, a soldier who had 
served in the Napoleonic wars. The jovial mem- 
ber of the Congress, he professed to know nothing 
about diplomacy, but only what Russia wanted, 
and he indulged constantly in pleasantries. He 
played to perfection the role of old soldier as it 
was then conceived, being bluff, hearty, naif, 
but possibly his openness and his outspokenness 
served as a blind to a nature much more subtle 
than some of his colleagues divined. Baron 
Brunnow, his second, had been trained in the 
Russian bureaucracy. He provided the prece- 
dents and statistics to support the mighty Orloff's 
decisions. 

The Piedmontese envoys kept themselves in the 
background. Cavour, the Piedmontese prime 
minister, watched every move, in the hope that it 
might lead to some benefit for oppressed Italy. He 
spoke little at the sittings; but he worked inces- 
santly out of the Congress to win over to Italy the 
sympathy of the great world, political, diplomatic 
and social. His associate, Count Villamarina, 
proved himself a wide-awake assistant. 



32 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

Of the Turkish envoys, Aali Pasha, the grand 
vizier, was a man of thorough Occidental training, 
while Mehemed Djemil Bey, the Turkish ambas- 
sador at Paris, knew from experience the ways of 
the Western Powers. Both were competent prac- 
titioners of that Oriental brand of statecraft, in 
which their Christian competitors had long be- 
lieved, whether justly or not, the craft predom- 
inated. It is interesting to note that in the 
concourse of great aristocrats the Turkish grand 
vizier was the only self-made man. He was born a 
poor plebeian. 

Such was the group of cabinet Jupiters who faced 
each other during nearly seven weeks around Wa- 
lewski's green table and decided the fate of Europe. 
We may sum up their cross-purposes briefly thus. 
England and Austria strove to cage Russia, in order 
to keep her from controlling the Black Sea, or 
encroaching on Turkey, or imperilling Constanti- 
nople. France, having emerged from the cage in 
which the Congress of Vienna locked her, nominally 
sided with England, but Walewski and most of the 
French court wished to let Russia off easy. Austria 
coveted territory on the Lower Danube and desired 
conditions which would spread her influence in the 
Balkans. Piedmont would have liked to see the 
Danubian principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia, 
united, and given to the Duke of Modena, thereby 
securing the annexation of Modena to Piedmont: 
but Cavour wisely refrained from pushing any such 
claim, lest it might justify the suspicion that Pied- 
mont had entered the Crimean War in order to 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 33 

aggrandize herself. Turkey needed only to sit still, 
while her friends worked for her: their interests 
and hers coincided in essentials. 

The protocols of the sessions are as dispassionate 
as a laundry list. To understand the real conflict 
between the envoys, we must turn to private 
memoranda. Those men, who look so dignified in 
their high collars, black stocks, and English frill of 
side-wiskers, knew that they were fighting for the 
future of their respective countries. They left 
nothing undone which might help them to win. 
Not policies merely, but the temperaments of the 
negotiators influenced the proceedings. On one 
occasion, when Walewski asked a question which 
Buol did not relish the latter " grew hot all over 
and went off like a fusee." Walewski, in truth, was 
the surprise, not to say butt, of the Congress. After 
he had uttered some unusually startling impro- 
priety, if his back was turned, Benedetti, the 
demure secretary, " raised his eyes to heaven, held 
his head in his hands, shrugged his shoulders and 
uttered discreet sighs." " Then," continues Hiib- 
ner, "a smile went round the table, while our presi- 
dent, without perceiving the ill-repressed hilarity of 
the audience, continued to lose his way in phrases 
empty, or compromising to the cause he was 
pleading." 

The fiercest personal clashes, however, occurred 
when the envoys let themselves go in the meetings 
of the small committees or in the private interviews 
where much of the real business of the Congress 
was settled. Intrigue, persuasion, eavesdropping, 



34 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

went on at the breakfasts and dinners, at the balls, 
plays, and receptions, in the drawing-rooms and 
even in the boudoirs. For the female lobbyist — 
some duchess, perhaps, or some adventuress under 
the protection of a high personage — played a 
recognized part in the political manoeuvres of the 
Second Empire. The emperor himself received in 
his cabinet a constant stream of aggrieved or sup- 
pliant envoys, whom he treated with tact, as he 
wished them all to convey to their governments the 
impression of his power and his good- will. 

Thus on March 22, Walewski caused the British 
plenipotentiaries to be shown into one room, the 
Russians into another, and the Prussians into a 
third, while he himself passed from one to another. 
" Clarendon and Cowley at last withdrew, pro- 
testing that they could take no further part in such 
a travesty." The next day Clarendon had an 
audience with the Emperor, " who was much dis- 
composed, and undertook to make Walewski 
understand that he must act in concert with the 
British plenipotentiaries. Business went on far 
better after this." 

In spite of Buol's airs, and Walewski's official 
primacy, Clarendon seems to have been the domi- 
nant figure in the Congress. No one consorted 
with him more assiduously or to better pur- 
pose than Cavour. The British grandee hardly 
understood that while he sat stroking his chin and 
listened to the startling suggestions of the little 
man from Turin, he was actually being probed, and 
at the same time inoculated with Italian ideals. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 35 

Two events diversified the routine of the Con- 
gress. On March 16, Palm Sunday, Empress 
Eugenie gave birth to the Prince Imperial. Two 
days later, the Congress, with the diplomatic 
corps and other bodies, called at the Tuileries to 
congratulate the emperor. : ' We filed past the 
cradle of the child, who has beautiful blue eyes," 
writes Hiibner. ' The grand cordon of the Legion 
of Honor was thrown over his coverlid." 

That same day (March 18) the Prussian dele- 
gates entered the Congress. They had been ex- 
cluded at first because Prussia had remained neu- 
tral during the Crimean War, thereby cutting 
herself off from the right to take part in the discus- 
sion of peace terms by the belligerents. She was 
suspected of being more than friendly to Russia, 
and, as the antagonist of Austria in the Germanic 
Confederation, it was assumed that she would 
badger her rival as much as possible. When, how- 
ever, the Congress proceeded to revise the treaty 
of 1841, which concerned the protection of the 
Black Sea, Prussia, as a signatory to that treaty, 
was invited to attend. She sent as her envoys 
Baron Otto Manteuffel, president of the Prussian 
ministry, a bureaucrat of the pre-Bismarckian era, 
who had helped to strangle the efforts of the 
Liberals in 1848. His strength lay in details of 
administration. His colleague, Count Maximilian 
Hatzfeldt, was another excellent representative of 
the Prussian bureaucracy. Having served in the 
Prussian embassy at Paris, and married a French- 
woman, the daughter of Marshal Castellane, he 



36 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

was fitted to supply Manteuffel's lack of acquaint- 
ance with the personnel of the Parisian world and 
with the local atmosphere. 

The Prussian envoys entered the Hall of the 
Ambassadors amid a profound silence. The Con- 
gress had just had a sharp altercation, because 
Walewski insisted that they should be counted as 
being present from the opening. Walewski's pur- 
pose is not quite clear, unless his motive was by 
this cheap and sly method to please Prussia. 
Clarendon, however, uttered an irrevocable No; 
Cowley backed him up; the other members ac- 
quiesced; and 'those gentlemen' were admitted 
on the understanding that they should express no 
opinion on the questions decided or to be decided. 1 
The coming of the Prussians rather increased the 
irritation which a month of discussion had pro- 
duced. " Everybody is on edge," Hiibner records 
on March 20. " It is time to sign." 

Berlin has never been a school for manners. A 
barbarian survival in the Prussian strain renders 
that people not only backward in urbanity them- 
selves, but also blind to its usefulness in others. 
They take it to be a sign of weakness. Their ideal 
Prussian negotiator was Brennus, who cut discus- 
sion short by throwing his sword into the scales. 
Manteuffel and Hatzfeldt, true to their stock, tried 
to bully their way through the Congress; but being 
met by men whom they could not browbeat, they 
threatened to quit and go home. Thereupon 
Cowley, on behalf of the English, French, and 

1 This accounts for the two protocols of March 18. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 37 

Austrian members, gave them their ultimatum, 
which, says Hiibner, " they accepted with very 
good grace." 

So the last fortnight wore fretfully away. On 
Saturday, March 29, the draft of the treaty was 
read. The next day, Quasimodo Sunday, all the 
plenipotentiaries, in court costume, came to the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs at noon. Walewski 
was a little late, as his wife had been confined 
during the preceding night. M. Feuillet des 
Conches, head of the protocol office, handed each 
chief envoy a copy of the treaty; then, while M. 
Feuillet read, the envoys followed to see that all 
was correct. That done, a feather, plucked from 
a black eagle in the Jardin des Plantes, was used 
as a quill to sign with. There being twenty-eight 
documents, however, requiring three hundred and 
ninety-two signatures, ordinary pens were soon 
substituted for the eagle's quill, which was pre- 
sented to Empress Eugenie. At half past one, the 
treaty was signed and a messenger hurried with 
the news to the emperor. Soon a salvo of a hun- 
dred and one guns boomed from the Hotel des 
Invalides. Clarendon proposed that the pleni- 
potentiaries should pay their respects to the 
emperor, and as the procession of court carriages 
drove through the Rue de Rivoli to the Tuileries, 
crowds thronged the route. "Everybody greeted 
us with effusion," writes Hiibner, "and many 
persons, men and women, shed tears of joy." 

That afternoon Lord Clarendon wrote Queen 
Victoria: " Your Majesty may feel satisfied with 



38 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

the position now occupied by England — six weeks 
ago it was a painful position here, everybody was 
against us, our motives were suspected, and our 
policy was denounced; but the universal feeling 
now is that we are the only country able and ready, 
and willing, if necessary, to continue the war; that 
we might have prevented peace, but that having 
announced our readiness to make peace on honour- 
able terms we have honestly and unselfishly acted 
up to our word. It is well known, too, that the 
conditions on which peace is made would have been 
different if England had not been firm, and every- 
body is, of course, glad even here that peace should 
not have brought dishonour to France." 

Clarendon did not write boastfully. That the 
negotiations turned out so well, from England's 
point of view, was due largely to him. He told 
Greville that " he had been able to accomplish his 
task by being ready to incur responsibility at home, 
and by being able to act unfettered, and taking on 
himself to disregard any instructions or recommend- 
ations from home that he did not approve of." 
The queen wished to reward him by making him a 
marquis, but he declined. His wife agreed with 
him. " I would not change the fine historical and 
much-loved name of Earl of Clarendon," she writes 
in her journal, " for all the marquisates in the 
world." 

Although the treaty was signed, the Congress 
continued to sit for a fortnight longer, in order to 
dispose of several outstanding subjects which did 
not properly come within the scope of the treaty. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 39 

This later business, as events proved, had much 
significance. 

On April 8 came the most spectacular session of 
all, in which, during a discussion of the general 
state of Europe, Clarendon attacked the out- 
rageous Papal government, and proposed that it 
should be secularized. " No! no! " shouted Buol 
and Hiibner. Walewski, under instructions from 
the emperor, attacked the monstrous regime of 
Ferdinand II — ' Bomba ' — at Naples. Then 
Cavour, in a speech sober in form and impassioned 
in substance, spoke for Italy, warning the Congress 
that there would never be real peace in Europe 
until the wrongs of the Italians were redressed. For 
the first time at any official gathering of European 
statesmen, Italy as a potential nation was cham- 
pioned. The Austrians protested: they replied 
sarcastically to their opponents, and tried to have 
all mention of this discussion expunged from the 
protocol. But the other plenipotentiaries voted 
for its inclusion. There the record stands, to mark 
the foreshadowing of a new epoch in European 
political combinations and a great moment in 
Cavour's career. 

Before adjourning, Walewski urged that they 
should emulate other congresses by adopting a 
declaration which should constitute a notable pro- 
gress in international law. '' The Congress of 
Westphalia," he said, " consecrated liberty of con- 
science; the Congress of Vienna, the abolition of 
the negro slave trade and the free navigation of 
rivers." He suggested that they should lay down 



40 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

the bases of a uniform maritime law in time of war. 
His suggestion was followed, and resulted in the 
Declaration of Paris, which contained four articles. 
" 1. Privateering is and remains abolished. 2. 
The neutral flag covers enemy goods, with the 
exception of contraband of war. 3. Neutral goods, 
except contraband of war, are not liable to capture 
under an enemy flag. 4. Blockades, to be binding, 
must be effective — that is, maintained by a force 
really sufficient to prevent access to the enemy's 
coast." l 

On April 18 the Congress was dissolved, having 
achieved its first purpose — peace — but only a 
fragile peace. This Congress, like that of Vienna, 
registered the views of the governing body in 
Europe; that body was despotic. Austria, Russia, 
and Turkey were absolute monarchies; so was 
Prussia, despite its pretense of constitutionalism. 
France was in the control of a despot who used any 
prop at hand to keep him in an upright position. 
England and Piedmont were liberal, but in both 
the upper classes shaped the national destiny. The 
time was, and is, far off when the monarchies of 
Continental Europe should be administered for 
and by their people. 

Napoleon would have liked the Congress to 
revoke the ban on his family; but he was shrewd 
enough not to push the matter. The Congress sat 
at Paris, under his auspices as host: what better 
proof could be produced that in fact the doctrine of 
legitimacy had lapsed, the Bonapartes were re- 
habilitated, and France restored to her high estate ? 

1 Protocol of April 16, 1856. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 41 

In this sketch I have not attempted to analyze 
or discuss the terms fought for by the Western 
Powers and resisted by the Russians : for my pur- 
pose is simply to describe the personnel of the Con- 
gress and its method of procedure, with such 
touches interspersed as may vivify it for a reader 
today. Even Bismarck admitted some years later 
that Russia had been unjustly dealt with, and he 
uttered no minatory protest when, during the 
Franco-Prussian War, she denounced that section 
of the Treaty which limited her naval equipment 
in the Black Sea. 

In conclusion, I borrow a final extract from 
Hiibner's journal, to which I have often referred, 
both on account of its intrinsic interest and be- 
cause, so far as I am aware, it has never appeared 
in an English translation. 

" Lord Clarendon," he writes, " is the type of 
the English diplomat of the Palmerston school. He 
is always conscious of the power of Britain, does not 
hesitate to call things by their proper name, and 
flares up in earnest at any obstacle he finds in his 
path. He has knocked poor Walewski about in 
fine fashion. . . . 

" I always like to do justice to adversaries. But 
Cavour has displeased me. In the Congress he 
exerted himself to appear modest. Only in the 
sitting of April 8, when Walewski, in spite of him, 
saw fit to throw the firebrand of Italy's affairs 
among the plenipotentiaries, he found courage 
— with the knowledge, if not with the approbation 
of the emperor — to attack Austria openly, whom 



42 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

he never ceased to attack secretly outside the con- 
ferences. The fact is that the Tuileries and the 
Palais Royal were the true theatre of his activity 
during the continuance of the Congress. Strongly 
upheld by Prince Napoleon [Plon-Plon], secretly 
undermined by Walewski, he could not always be 
satisfied with the emperor, who vacillated forever 
between his good and evil instincts, between his 
desire to cause himself to be accepted by the sover- 
eigns and his fear of compromising himself with 
the [revolutionary] sect. I am assured that he 
made life hard for Piedmont's prime minister, and 
that the latter quitted Paris displeased and full of 
vexation. His person lacks distinction. One feels, 
one sees, one recognizes in him the conspirator." 

John Morley, writing fifty years later, remarked 
that the only persons who showed far-sighted cal- 
culation in the Crimean business were Cavour and 
the Turk. 



THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 43 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Jasmund, J. von, ed. Aktenstiicke zur orientalischen 
Frage. Berlin, 1855-59. 3 vols. 

British and Foreign State Papers. 

Diplomatic Study on the Crimean War. (Russian official 
publication.) London, 1882. 2 vols. 

Angeberg, Comte d' [pseud, for L. Chodzko]. Le Traite 
de Paris du 30 mars 1856. 2 e ed. Paris, 1877. 

Drouyn de Lhuys, E. " Les neutres pendant la guerre 
d'Orient." In Seances el Travaux de VAcademie des 
Sciences Morales et Politiques, lxxxv (1868), pp. 5-41. 

Friedjung, H. Der Krimkrieg und die osterreichische 
Politik. Stuttgart, 1907. 

Geffcken, F. H. Zur Geschichte des orientalischen 
Krieges. Berlin, 1881. 

Gourdon, E. Histoire du Congres de Paris. Paris, 1857. 

Greville, C. C. F. A Journal of the Reign of Queen 
Victoria from 1852 to 1860. London, 1887. 2 vols. 

Greville, H. W. Leaves from the Diary of Henry Grev- 
ille. Second Series. London, 1884. 

HiAbner, Count Joseph Alexander von. Neuf ansde souve- 
nirs d' un Ambassadeur d' Autriche a Paris. Paris, 1904. 
2 vols. 

Martin, Sir T. Life of His Royal Highness the Prince 
Consort. London, 1875-80. 5 vols. 

Maxwell, Sir H. E. Life and Letters of George William 
Frederick, Fourth Earl of Clarendon. London, 1913. 
2 vols. 

Thayer, W. R. Life and Times of Cavour. Boston 
and New York, 1911. 2 vols. 



44 THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 

Le Traite de Paris du 30 mars etudie dans ses causes et 

ses effets. Paris, 1856. 
The Letters of Queen Victoria. London, 1907. 3 vols. 
Walpole, Sir S. The History of Twenty -Five Years, 

1856-1880. London, 1904-08. 4 vols. 
See also the accounts in Pierre de la Gorce and Emile 

Ollivier. 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

By ROBERT HOWARD LORD 

AMONG the great historic assemblies of its 
kind, the Congress of Berlin had the most 
restricted sphere of action. Unlike the Congress 
of Vienna, it undertook no general reconstruction 
of Europe; even more than the Congress of Paris, 
it held itself — officially, at least — to the con- 
sideration of one clearly defined group of questions. 
But if the issues in 1878 were fewer, they were, per- 
haps, more complex and difficult than on these 
former occasions. The Congress of Berlin was 
called to regulate the thorniest and most dangerous 
question in the whole range of European politics — 
the Eastern Question; and that at the end of the 
worst cataclysm which that question had yet pro- 
duced. Its task was the more delicate because, 
unlike the preceding congresses, it was not con- 
voked at the close of a general European war, 
which left one or more of the great Powers defeated 
and begging for peace, and the rest of them ex- 
hausted by their exertions and therefore inclined 
to compromise* In 1878 the only one of the great 
Powers that nad just been at war, emerged from 
the contest flushed with triumph; the other great 
Powers appeared at the Congress with their 
strength fresh and unimpaired, and several of 



48 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

them were armed and in no mood for tame sub- 
mission. (The Congress of Berlin was called, there- 
of ore, not so much to end one war as to avert 
{ another^ (Its office was to dictate terms to the 
victors rather than to the vanquished. It is notable 
as the only occasion in the nineteenth century 
when the Concert of the Powers has been strong 
enough to bring a victorious belligerent to the bar 
of Europe and oblige him to submit the results of 
his victory to the judgment and revision of a con- 
gressX As an affirmation of the solidarity of Europe, 
of the principle that important changes in Europe 
are matters of European concern and not to be 
effected without the sanction of Europe, the Con- 
gress of Berlin is a unique and striking phenomenon. 
(But as a demonstration that the councils of united 
Europe are inspired with wisdom, justice, or even 
common sense, the events of 1878 are not so grati- 
fying. Even more than its predecessors, the 
Congress of Berlin has left a dubious reputationj 
On the one hand, its work has been lauded as the 
wisest diplomatic transaction of modern times; 
but, on the other hand, it has been said that " no 
diplomatic performance has ever resulted in such 
general dissatisfaction." 

(As everyone knows, the meeting of the Congress 
of Berlin was the result of the Russo-Turkish war 
of 1877 and of the ensuing diplomatic intervention 
of the other Powers. Russia had undertaken that 
war in the name of justice and humanity, in the 
spirit of a crusade. After the Bosnian revolt and 
the massacres in Bulgaria, after the Concert of 



! 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 49 

Europe had failed pitifully in its effort to obtain 
from the Turks, by diplomatic means, serious 
reforms and guarantees against further outrages 
in the future, Russia alone had had the courage 
to draw the sword in order to end an intolerable 
situation. Her enterprise might fairly be called 
the most just and necessary war undertaken in 
Europe in the nineteenth century. At the close of , 
the struggle, while announcing that the other 
Powers should have a voice in the final resettle- 
ment of the Balkans, Russia felt herself entitled — 
and, indeed, obliged — to impose a preliminary 
treaty of peace upon her prostrate adversary. It 
is difficult to see how she could have done other- 
wise. For, since the main cause of the war had 
been the persistent refusal of the Porte to defer to 
the will of Europe, it was impossible to terminate 
hostilities without securing binding guarantees 
that in the impending negotiations for a final 
settlement the will of Europe would not again be 
thwarted by the obstinacy of the Turks. It is 
true that some objections may be raised to the 
precise terms of the treaty. The boundaries of the 
new Bulgaria, while conforming in the main to the 
best ethnographic information then available, 
were too extensive. The treatment of Rumania 
was somewhat ungenerous. The provisions with 
regard to the western half of the Balkan Peninsula 
could not have lasted long; indeed, they were not 
intended to, but Russia was precluded from at- 
tempting a permanent settlement in that half of 
the peninsula by regard for the wishes of Austria. 



50 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

But, allowing for the circumstances of the moment 
and the avowedly provisional character of the 
instrument, one may accept without too much 
qualification the recent dictum of an English writer 
that " the Treaty of San Stefano was the wisest 
measure ever prepared for the pacification of the 
Balkan Peninsula." Had the other Powers been 
actuated only by disinterestedness, moderation, 
and foresight, they would then have assembled in 
congress resolved, at the least, to confirm the 
essential arrangements of San Stefano, to stipulate 
analogous arrangements for the western half of the 
peninsula, and to provide for the collective guard- 
ianship of Europe over the organization and free 
development of the liberated nations, j 

Even before the Treaty of San Stefano — before 
the outbreak of the war, in fact — Russia had 
repeatedly promised that the definitive settlement 
of all questions of general European interest arising 
out of the war should be effected with the partici- 
pation of all the Powers. When Austria, in Feb- 
ruary, 1878, proposed that this participation should 
take the form of a conference, the Tsar readily 
assented. Soon afterwards it was agreed that in 
order to lend greater solemnity to the proceedings, 
the assembly should be raised to the dignity of a 
congress; all the Powers were to be represented by 
their leading ministers; and the place of meeting 
was fixed at Berlin, as the seat of a government 
assumed to be disinterested and impartial. 

But it was impossible to go into the Congress 
without a preliminary agreement among the 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 51 

Powers as to the basis and nature of the work to be 
done there. Although the assumption has recently 
been made in some quarters that a peace congress 
may work effectively without any understanding in 
advance as to the fundamental questions at issue, 
still everyone familiar with politics knows that 
public and formal discussions cannot be conducted 
with any hope of a successful outcome, unless an 
agreement on the chief questions has previously 
been arrived at. History shows that conferences 
and congresses have almost invariably met for the 
purpose of registering decisions the substance of 
which has been agreed upon beforehand. 

/in 1878 the meeting of the Congress was very 
nearly prevented by the difficulties that arose in the 
way of such a preliminary understanding. The 
fundamental question was whether the task of the 
future Congress should be to confirm and complete 
the solution of the Eastern Question outlined at 
San Stefano, or whether it should undertake to 
tear up that treaty and to ' annihilate the results 
of the war.' The latter course would doubtless 
have suited the wishes of England and Austria. 
For, unfortunately, the British government was 
still obsessed with the traditional chimaera of main- 
taining the independence and integrity of Tur- 
key, not, indeed, for love of the Turks, but because 
the vital needs of the British empire were sup- 
posed to require it. The court of Vienna was eager 
to make acquisitions without having done anything 
to deserve them, and also ambitious to substitute 
itself for Russia as the dominant Power in the Bal- 



52 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

kans. Hence for three months the meeting of the 
Congress was postponed, and the peace of Europe 
seemed to tremble in the balance, while England, 
Austria, and Russia were diplomatically fencing, 
trying each other out to see how far each would go 
in defence of his particular standpoint. How 
serious the danger of war was, it is difficult to 
estimate, for undoubtedly there was a good deal of 
'bluffing' on all sides. At any rate, it was Russia 
who first showed signs of weakening. Exhausted 
by the unexpectedly arduous struggle she had just 
undergone, ill-prepared to risk a new war in which 
she would presumably have found England, Aus- 
tria, Turkey, and Rumania arrayed against her, 
disappointed, too, in the hope of receiving any 
effective support from Germany — despite the 
assurances of undying gratitude and unstinted 
devotion which Bismarck and his master had so 
often lavished upon the Tsar — Russia at length 
turned to her principal opponent, England, with 
the offer to sacrifice a large part of the Treaty of 
San Stefano. The outcome of the negotiation was 
the three secret Anglo-Russian conventions, signed 
at London on May 30, which contained the most 
important features of the later Treaty of Berlin. 
It was to the credit of both sides that each had 
made large concessions: it was not so creditable, 
however, that they sought to keep their agree- 
ments from the knowledge of the other cabinets 
(save Germany). If it was essential to the success 
of the Congress that the two states principally 
interested should come to a working agreement in 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 53 

advance, it was at least highly desirable that the 
discussions of the Congress should not be turned 
into a farce, and the other Powers led into grave 
miscalculations or suspicions, by sham debates 
over questions already clandestinely decided/^ 

But this did not exhaust the precautions of Lord 
Beaconsfield's secret diplomacy. As a corrective 
to the concessions just made to Russia, the London 
cabinet pushed through the secret Convention of 
Constantinople (June 4), which provided for a per- 
petual Anglo-Turkish alliance for the defence of 
the Asiatic possessions of the Porte, assigned to 
England the island of Cyprus as an immediate 
reward for her future services, and bound the 
Sultan, in agreement with England, to make the 
necessary reforms in his Asiatic provinces. 

On June 6 another secret convention was con- 
cluded between Great Britain and Austria, by 
which the latter promised to support England at 
the Congress in the Bulgarian question, while 
England, in return, agreed to uphold any proposi- 
tion Austria might make with regard to Bosnia and 
the Herzegovina. The court of Vienna had also 
taken its precautions in other quarters. It had 
made sure that neither France nor Russia would 
oppose its designs upon these two provinces; and 
as for Bismarck, if he did not originally suggest this 
acquisition to Austria, at least, for two years back, 
he had never ceased to urge her to seize these 
provinces without ceremony. 

The main obstacles having been cleared away 
by this extraordinary series of ententes and con- 



54 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

ventions, early in June Bismarck sent out to the 
Powers who had signed the Treaty of Paris the 
invitation to meet in congress to submit the work 
of San Stefano to free discussion and the necessary 
revision. Prance had already laid down the con- 
dition, which had been accepted by the other 
Powers, that the Congress should take up only 
those questions which arose directly and naturally 
out of the late war. The object of this reservation, 
of course, was to exclude from discussion questions 
regarding certain outlying provinces of Turkey, 
such as Egypt, Syria, or Tunis, whose status 
France did not desire to see altered at that time. 

The Congress met at Berlin on June 13. None 
of its predecessors, not even the Congress of 
Vienna, had brought together a more illustrious 
company of statesmen. Turkey, indeed, was 
unfortunate in her spokesmen — "a Greek, a 
renegade, and an imbecile," Bismarck rudely 
characterized them — but it made little difference, 
for they had been summoned to the Congress only 
to sign away provinces. M. Waddington and 
Count Corti, the first plenipotentiaries of France 
and Italy respectively, earned general respect and 
confidence by their reasonableness, tact, and a 
perhaps undiplomatic honesty. A much more 
important role was reserved for Count Andrassy, 
the Austrian foreign minister: a striking figure 
with his scarlet uniform, his sparkling black eyes, 
hair curling about his face, upturned mustache, 
and the general appearance of a gay hussar; but 
also an eloquent speaker, a clever tactician, and 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 55 

a master of the more occult arts of diplomacy. The 
leading antagonists in the impending battles, how- 
ever, were the representatives of Russia and Eng- 
land. The first plenipotentiary of Russia was 
the octogenarian chancellor, Prince Gorchakov — 
bent, thin, so feeble that he had to be carried into 
the hall of sessions, but still preserving the courage 
and dexterity, the exquisite grace and distinction, 
the command of polished and sonorous phrases, 
the high-flown and somewhat theatrical eloquence, 
to which he owed his great reputation. The hardest 
part of the work of the Russian mission naturally 
devolved upon the second plenipotentiary, Count 
Shuvalov, a handsome, brilliant, and immensely 
active diplomatist, whose conciliatory spirit and 
readiness to make concessions were largely respon- 
sible for the success of the Congress. On the 
English side, Lord Salisbury played much the same 
role as Shuvalov: Lord Beaconsfield was the 
worthy counterpart of Gorchakov. 'Dizzy' was, 
indeed, the stormy petrel of this Congress. If he 
did not, as Pwich prophesied, arrive at Berlin with 
a large military escort, keep an ironclad on the 
Spree, attend the Congress with cocked hat, a 
brass band, and revolvers, enter singing " We 
don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do," draw 
caricatures of the emperor of Russia on the blot- 
ting-paper, and wave the Union Jack continually 
over the head of the president; at least he pro- 
vided most of the sensations of the Congress: he 
assumed from the start a defiant, irritating, and 
uncompromising tone, threatened that if he did 



56 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

not get what he wanted, he would go home, and 
kept the assembly down to the last in constant 
uneasiness lest he should stagger them by some 
new and unexpected theatrical stroke. 

But the dominating figure at the Congress was 
Bismarck, its president. Guiding the discussions 
with rare skill and tact and with a certain good- 
humored but compelling brusqueness, holding in 
his hands the threads of all the secret negotiations 
that went on behind the scenes, he did, to a large 
extent, earn the beatitude of the peacemakers 
and his chosen title of ' the honest broker ' by his 
constant efforts to mediate, to reconcile opposing 
standpoints, and to ensure the success of the Con- 
gress. On the other hand, it must be said that 
owing to his extreme impatience to finish quickly, 
an impatience largely justified by the shattered 
state of his health — he himself has related that 
he was obliged to drink a jug of port before every 
session, in order to keep up at all — he insisted on 
hastening matters too precipitately. He drove the 
Congress along by strokes of the whip, as the brow- 
beaten Turks related. Doubtless a slower proced- 
ure would have led to a less superficial settlement. 
Moreover, it was not to the advantage of the 
Congress that the man who, above all others, con- 
trolled its decisions, was a statesman who regarded 
the 'interests of Europe' as a mere empty phrase; 
who viewed the Christian races whose fate was to 
be settled, not only with supreme indifference but 
with unconcealed contempt; who took no interest 
in the Eastern Question whatever, except in so far 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 57 

as it affected the mutual relations of the great 
Powers ; and who therefore strove to exclude every 
question which did not aifect those relations, as 
an idle waste of time. At all events, Bismarck held 
such a position at this Congress as can be paral- 
lelled, perhaps, only by that of Metternich at the 
Congress of Vienna. Not without reason he is said 
to have jested: " Le Congres, c'est moi." 

In its external settings, the Congress had little 
of the splendor or the exuberant social life that had 
distinguished or distracted its predecessors. It 
might have been said that this prosaic Congress 
" marche mais ne danse pas." There were, indeed, 
scarcely any social diversions, except for a few 
formal receptions at court and some entertain- 
ments at the various embassies. Rumors circu- 
lated that the city council of Berlin, after much 
consideration and reconsideration of the weighty 
subject, might perhaps be induced to contemplate 
the possibility of inviting the assembly to a 
luncheon in the grand hall of the Rathaus; but 
in these high hopes the Congress was disappointed. 

While in 1814-15 thousands of persons of every 
description had flocked to Vienna to ' see the Con- 
gress,' the assembly of 1878 passed off almost 
unnoticed by the Berliners; and the only visitors 
who came, apart from the tribe of ' special corre- 
spondents,' were the representatives of the down- 
trodden or the newly emancipated races of the East 
and the agents of various other deserving ' causes.' 
Among the latter one may note the delegates of the 
Alliance Israelite, who had come to plead the cause 



58 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

of their oppressed kinsmen in the Balkans, and to 
whose exertions the so-called 'Liberty of Con- 
science ' articles in the Treaty of Berlin were 
largely due. A committee of the Peace Society also 
appeared to lay before the Congress the question of 
international arbitration. Bismarck decorously 
promised to bring their petition to the attention of 
the high assembly — and, of course, nothing more 
was heard of the matter. As the London Times 
commented, " the presence of the delegates of the 
Peace Society at Berlin must have had something 
of the effect of a Quaker deputation in the midst of 
Choctaws or Iroquois accoutred for the war- 
path." It is scarcely necessary to add that the 
Congress did nothing whatever to meet the hopes 
voiced in some quarters that it would take up the 
cause of Poland, discuss the problem of Socialism, 
or take the first step towards the reduction of 
armaments. For it was characteristic of this Con- 
gress that, in contrast to the two preceding ones 
and in deference to its president, it carefully 
avoided every larger issue, every humanitarian 
question, any attempt at. building up the law of 
nations. The age of force had arrived, and the 
Iron Chancellor did not believe in ' European 
interests.' 

Although the most elementary rules of justice 
would seem to have required that the representa- 
tives of those Christian states whose vital interests 
were at stake should participate in the Congress 
with at least deliberative voice, nevertheless that 
privilege was denied to them. The delegates of 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 59 

Serbia and Montenegro were not even allowed to 
enter the assembly to state their case. The Greek 
and Rumanian envoys were privileged to set forth 
their national aspirations briefly before the Con- 
gress; but it was understood that they were to be 
" entendus, mais pas ecoutes," and it is recorded 
that while the Greeks were pleading the cause of 
their country, " Beaconsfield, Salisbury, and Wad- 
dington slept the sleep of the just." The great 
Powers did not intend to allow their deliberations 
to be embarrassed by the presence, the prayers, or 
the remonstrances of the small states. 

Precisely what went on behind the so rigidly 
barred doors of this august conclave, it is difficult 
to know. The sources at hand — the cut-and-dried 
protocol, the memoirs and letters of the diplomats 
present, the guesses of the newspapers — do not 
permit us to follow in detail the inner history of the 
Congress of Berlin. At all events, we probably 
know the general course of things. 

The Treaty of San Stefano served as the basis of 
the discussions. All the more contentious ques- 
tions were settled outside the Congress at private 
meetings — usually meetings between the pleni- 
potentiaries of England, Russia, and Austria, with 
whom Bismarck kept in close touch. Ordinarily 
the formal sessions of the Congress served chiefly 
to register and sanction what had been decided 
upon outside. Hence many of the great oratorical 
contests recorded in the protocol were only sham 
battles; Lord Beaconsfield's 'magnificent fight' 
before the Congress on the Batum question was 



60 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

mainly histrionic; and some sessions may be 
described as elaborately staged comedies of which 
the plot had been fixed in advance, the roles as- 
signed and rehearsed, and practically every epi- 
sode agreed upon by general consent beforehand. 
Often, however, the assembly got out of control, 
and the waves of debate ran high. When Lord 
Beaconsfield arose to " defy somebody," when 
Shuvalov discharged a Parthian shaft, or when 
Prince Gorchakov flung his paper-knife upon the 
table and angrily gathered up his papers as if to 
leave the room, then Bismarck had to exert all his 
powers to pour oil on the waters. If worst came 
to worst, he summoned up his last reserves by 
declaring himself thirsty and inviting assembled 
Europe to adjourn for an hour to sample the 
contents of his famous buffet. 

The hardest battles, of course, were fought in the 
private conferences referred to above. Although 
the chief questions that were to come before the 
Congress had been decided in advance by the 
Anglo-Russian conventions, still various second- 
ary problems — such as the limits and the organ- 
ization of the two Bulgarias — afforded material 
for violent contests, and, indeed, very nearly led to 
the break-up of the Congress. 

Although the story has sometimes been denied, 
I think there is ample reason to believe that at a 
critical moment — about the twentieth of June — 
Lord Beaconsfield presented his demands to the 
Russians in the form of an ultimatum, and then 
ordered a special train to Calais, intending to go 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 61 

home, dissolve the Congress, and risk a war, in 
case, as he assumed, his terms were not accepted 
by the twenty-second. And this was not by way 
of 'bluffing,' as is commonly said, but in earnest, 
and in accordance with an agreement previously 
made with the Queen. Bismarck, learning of the 
special train, and realizing the gravity of the 
situation, intervened and persuaded the Russians 
to yield. The Congress was saved, but it is painful 
to reflect that the peace of Europe was thus endan- 
gered merely in order to win for the Sultan the 
right of keeping garrisons in Eastern Rumelia and 
fortifying the passes of the Balkans, two privileges 
of which the Turks were never to make any use and 
which were not worth the paper on which they were 
written. This was what the London newspapers 
called a "glorious success," "which deprived Russia 
of the greater part of the results of the war "; a 
case of " Russian insinuating eloquence encounter- 
ing the firm force of English resolve." Doubtless 
it was a famous victory. 

If the Congress weathered this crisis and some 
lesser ones, it was because most of the Powers were 
sincerely anxious for peace. Europe was wearied 
of the incessant wars of the past generation, and in 
this respect, if in no other, the assembly admirably 
reflected the wishes of the public. But keeping peace 
meant that the Congress had to proceed by what 
the newspapers called 'courageous compromises,' 
i. e., bargains in which the rights of the various 
races of the East were regularly sacrificed to the 
ambitions or the alleged interests of the great 



62 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

Powers. In the midst of these sordid transactions, 
considerations of principle, justice, and consistency 
were lost from sight. Although the expediency 
of reconstructing the map of the Balkans along 
national lines was admitted by everyone when it 
suited his purpose, still that principle had to 
give way whenever 'political' or 'strategic' or 
* commercial ' interests of the great Powers could 
be adduced against it. Lord Beaconsfield and 
Count Andrassy insisted on splitting the Bulgarian 
nation into three parts in order to ensure the exist- 
ence of a strong Turkey. The same statesmen then 
tore away from the Porte three provinces (Cyprus, 
Bosnia, and the Herzegovina) which the Peace of 
San Stef ano had left to it, with the brazen explana- 
tion that they hoped thereby to strengthen Turkey 
by assisting her to "concentrate and condense" 
her resources. But when the Greeks presented 
themselves with the request that they too might 
be allowed to help in this new method of invigorat- 
ing Turkey, Lord Beaconsfield informed them that 
they had utterly mistaken the purpose of the Con- 
gress : they seemed to imagine that it was to parti- 
tion the Ottoman empire, while nothing was 
further from the thoughts of the high assembly. 
In short, the principles invoked varied incessantly 
with the needs of the moment. At this Congress, 
as at earlier ones, it was the interests of the great 
Powers that took precedence over every other 
consideration. 

Apart from the transactions later embodied in 
the Treaty of Berlin, the diplomatists found time 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 63 

for many other bargains and confidential agree- 
ments of a more or less formal nature. Thus, for 
instance, on July 10, after Count Andrassy had 
pointed his pistol at the head of Serbia and in- 
formed her that unless she agreed to his terms she 
should get nothing whatever from the Congress, 
the Serbian envoy at Berlin signed a convention 
with Austria, which was intended virtually to place 
the railway and tariff system of the little princi- 
pality under the control of its great neighbor. On 
July 13 the versatile Austrian minister signed two 
more secret agreements, the one with Turkey, the 
other with Russia: both related to Bosnia and 
Novibazar, and the one practically nullified or 
abrogated the other. 

In the last days of the Congress, after the publi- 
cation of the Cyprus Convention had directed the 
excited attention of the diplomats to the Mediter- 
ranean situation, numerous confidential discussions 
took place with regard to the fate of the outlying 
dependencies of Turkey in that region. In order 
to calm Waddington's indignation over the seizure 
of Cyprus, Beaconsfield and Salisbury informed 
him that France might do whatever she pleased 
with Tunis : England would not oppose her. Bis- 
marck is said to have seconded this suggestion to 
the French, while at the same time he was offering 
this same Tunis to the Italians. Salisbury, on the 
other hand, appears to have tried to divert Italian 
ambition to Tripoli. We also hear of an informal 
Anglo-French agreement to preserve the status quo 
in Egypt and Syria, despite Bismarck's exhorta- 



64 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

tions to the British to appropriate Egypt for them- 
selves. It is curious, but not surprising, to see 
the German chancellor, who was then so osten- 
tatiously engaged in saving the peace of Europe, 
also exerting himself so busily to sow seeds of dis- 
cord for the future. He declared later that it was 
to Germany's interest that France and Italy should 
fall out over Tunis; and he is said to have proph- 
esied that Egypt would be for France and Eng- 
land what Sleswick-Holstein had been for Austria 
and Prussia. These 'conversations' have a con- 
siderable importance, for here, for the first time, 
it appears, the impending partition of North Africa 
was clearly outlined and widely discussed. The 
Congress of Berlin thus forms a landmark in the 
history, not only of the Eastern Question, but also 
of the colonial expansion of Europe. 

The treaty which crowned the labors of the Con- 
gress was signed on July 13. It would be super- 
fluous to enumerate here the provisions of the 
Treaty of Berlin: but it may not be out of place to 
consider briefly, in the light of that treaty, how far 
the Congress had proved adequate to its task. 

In the numerous and sometimes extravagant 
eulogies that have been showered upon this assem- 
bly, its claims to the gratitude of the world are 
usually based upon the following arguments. (1) 
The Congress averted a disastrous European war. 
(2) By sanctioning the independence of Rumania, 
Serbia, and Montenegro, and the autonomy of Bul- 
garia, and by according appropriate extensions of 
territory to all the Christian Balkan states, the 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 65 

Congress gave recognition to the principle of na- 
tionality as none of its predecessors had done; it 
satisfied the essential interests of all the states and 
races of the peninsula, and opened up a bright new 
era in their history. (3) Forsaking the traditions 
of most previous treaties, the Congress embodied 
in the public law of Europe the principle that the 
Sultan was under pledge to the great Powers in re- 
spect to the good government of all the dominions 
that remained to him. (4) By imposing the prin- 
ciple of complete religious freedom and religious 
equality upon the Balkan states, the assembly per- 
formed a great act of justice, and earned the title of 
' the Liberty of Conscience Congress.' 

All of this is in a measure true, but for a correct^ 
appreciation of the Congress it is necessary to point 
out that nearly all the commendable provisions of 
the Treaty of Berlin come straight from the Treaty 
of San Stefano. The diplomats at Berlin improved 
upon the Russian treaty in only two important re- 
spects: (1) in securing for all the Powers, instead 
of for Russia alone, the right of watching over, and 
assisting in, the execution of the new arrangements 
in the Balkans; (2) in imposing, with greater em- 
phasis and with stronger guarantees, the principle 
of religious liberty. With regard to the latter point, 
however, the Congress was probably actuated less 
by zeal for religious freedom than by deference to 
the Jewish bankers, whom the statesmen at Berlin 
could not afford to defy. There was a newspaper 
story that Bismarck agreed to work for religious 
liberty at the Congress on condition that the Berlin 



66 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

Jews agreed to support the Conservative candi- 
dates at the impending elections; and whether the 
story is true or false, nothing would have been more 
characteristic of the statesman who recognized 
nojprinciples,' but only 'interests,' in politics. 

(Apart from these two restrictions, all the good 
things in the Treaty of Berlin were simply the con- 
firmation, grudgingly and reluctantly given, of the 
provisions of San Stefano. This 'great deliverance 
of the Balkan Christians ' was the work of Russia, 
and of Russia alone, and the Congress merely sanc- 
tioned so much of it as for very shame it dared not 
refuse. With the exceptions already noticed, 

a wherever the Congress altered or supplemented the 
work of San Stefano, it only made matters worse. 
The dismemberment of Bulgaria^ Lord Beacons- 
field's naive belief that he could keep this sundered 
nation apart by the childish device of calling 
Southern Bulgaria ' Eastern Rumelia ' ; the hybrid, 
artificial, and " ingeniously inexpedient " organiza- 
tion given to this latter province; the confining of 
Greece to such narrow limits that that kingdom 
could only remain " a centre, not of national devel- 
opment, but of national conspiracies " ; the ignoring 
of the desires of the Serb race for national unity; 
the bestowal upon Austria of Bosnia and the Herze- 
govina, with the results so familiar to us today; 
finally, the restoration of nearly half of what it had 
lost to a government which was admittedly the 
disgrace of Europe, and in whose will or ability to 
reform no one could any longer seriously believe: 
such are some examples of the wisdom, justice, and 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 67 

foresight with which the diplomats at Berlin dis- 
charged their mission. 

(And all this was the more lamentable because it 
couH so easily have been avoided. At that time 
the proper solution of the Eastern Question, at 
least with regard to the Balkan peninsula, was 
already clear to all reasonable and unprejudiced 
men. That solution was, of course, the organiza- 
tion of the peninsula (Constantinople excepted) 
into independent Christian states, with the demarc- 
ation of frontiers based as far as possible upon the 
nationality of the populatiojj) As a French publi- 
cist wrote not long after, this inevitable solution 
might have been accelerated or definitively estab- 
lished at the moment of the Treaty of San Stefano. 
" Turkey, prostrate at that time, submitted to 
everything; she accepted the Russian treaty, 
which freed the Slavs from the Danube to the 
Aegean; Europe might have intervened to com- 
plete the work of liberation begun by . . . Russia. 
Europe did intervene, but only in order to place the 
results already gained in question, to postpone to a 
distant and uncertain epoch the solution which 
might have been effected then without delay and 
without difficulties." 

(VVhy did the Congress of Berlin make such bad 
work of it ? Because the Powers who controlled 
the Congress were callous to suffering and blood- 
shed, and indifferent to the rights and aspirations 
of the lesser nations, when these things interfered 
with what they considered their interests i Because 
these Powers held artificial and inflated concep- 



68 THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 

tions of what their interests demanded. Because 
Count Andrassy imagined that the security of Aus- 
tria required the dismemberment of the Serb race; 
and Lord Beaconsfield imagined that the security 
of India depended on the dismemberment of the 
Bulgarian race and upon England's upholding the 
worst government in Europe. Because morbid 
fears and groundless suspicions and sheer jingoism 
precluded certain Powers from any understanding 
of Russia's standpoint and Russia's splendid work; 
so that Lord Beaconsfield would refer to the cru- 
sade of liberation which Russia had just completed 
only as " that fatal and disastrous war," while the 
British Tory press could see in it nothing but " self- 
ish ambition," " lawless cupidity," and " barbaric 
lust of conquest," and British journals gloated that 
" it was well to teach the Autocrat of all the Rus- 
sias and the Bashkirs that he cannot pursue his 
conquering career unchecked, in the fashion of a 
Genghis Khan or a Timur Leng." \Li a word, the 
great fault of the Congress of Berlin, as of so many 
congresses in the past, was the failure to recognize 
that the peace of Europe is not ensured nor the 
interests of any Power permanently served by 
creating unnatural, unjust, and intolerable con- 
ditions ;\the failure to recognize that even in inter- 
national politics justice is, in the long run, the 
surest foundation of states and nations. 



THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 69 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Parliamentary Payers, 1878. Turkey, Nos. 39 and 44. ' 
Avril, A. d'. Negotiations relatives au Traite de Berlin. 

Paris, 1886. 
Bismarck, Otto, Fiirst von. Gedanken und Erinnerung- 

en. Stuttgart, 1898. 2 vols. Also in English 

translation. 
Biowitz, H. de. Memoirs of M. de Blowitz. New York, 

1903. 
dimming, A. N. " The Secret History of the Treaty of 

Berlin." In Nineteenth Century, lviii (1905), pp. 83- 

90. 
Georgevitch, V. " La Serbie au Congres de Berlin." In 

Revue dliistoire diplomatique, v (1891) pp. 483-552. 
Hanotaux, G. Histoire de la France contemporaine. 

Paris, 1903-05. 4 vols. Also in English translation. 
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, Chlodwig, Fiirst zu. Denk- 

wurdigkeiten. Stuttgart, 1907. 2 vols. Also in 

English translation. 
Moiiy, C. de. Souvenirs et causeries d'un diplomate. 

Paris, 1909. 
Newton, Lord. Lord Lyons. London, 1913. 2 vols. 
Raschdau, L. " Die Botschafterkonferenz in Kon- 

stantinopel und der russisch-turkische Krieg." In 

Deutsche Rundschau, cxli (1909), pp. 361-379. 
Wertheimer, E. von. Graf Julius Andrdssy. Stutt- 
gart, 1910-13. 3 vols. 
See also the accounts in Walpole and Chiala (Pagine di 

storia contemporanea.) 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

By ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE 

T^EW people would deny that among the ques- 
* tions pending in the terrible balance of the pres- 
ent war, the future status of Constantinople and 
of the Straits that give access to it is one of the 
most important. This was not so apparent in the 
early days of the struggle, but the entry of the 
Turks into the conflict and the ill-fated expedition 
against Gallipoli, as well as the events that have 
happened in the rest of the Balkan Peninsula, have 
once more awakened the interest of the world in 
the old and ever recurring Eastern Question. We 
now know officially what had indeed been inti- 
mated before, that Russia has been promised by 
her allies, as part of the fruits of victory, the pos- 
session of the city which has so long excited the 
ambitions of her statesmen and the dreams of her 
people. 

Countless writers have described the unequalled 
situation of Constantinople at the meeting place of 
two continents, with its splendid inner harbor, the 
Golden Horn, and with the Sea of Marmora as a 
lake of its own which can be closed to any foe by 
whoever holds possession of the Straits, the famous 
Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Napoleon I declared 
that Constantinople was in itself worth half an 

73 



74 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

empire. But obvious as the advantages of the 
situation are, they have not told equally at all 
periods of history. In the Greek and Roman 
world, the old town of Byzantium did not hold a 
particularly notable place. For centuries it was 
inferior to the neighboring inland cities of Nicaea 
and Nicomedia. Constantinople itself since its 
founding in 330 has always been the capital of an 
empire and usually of a considerable one, but it has 
been affected not only by the fortunes of the state 
to which it has belonged, but by events and in- 
fluences of a more general nature. It benefited in 
the seventh century from the closing of the Red 
Sea route by the Arabs, which stimulated the over- 
land trade from Central Asia and from the Persian 
Gulf across Asia Minor. It also gained by the 
Christianization of Russia and the resulting in- 
creased intercourse with northeastern Europe. On 
the other hand, the renewal of direct relations 
between western Europe and Egypt and the East 
after the Crusades was disastrous to it, as it was 
thus left to one side of the main routes of travel; 
and it suffered another blow to its prosperity from 
the Tartar conquest of Russia in the thirteenth cen- 
tury. The imperial city, when the Turks became 
masters of it in 1453, presented but a shadow of its 
former greatness. Since that day, as the capital of 
the Ottoman empire, it has shared in the fortunes 
of that empire, waxing with its rise and waning 
with its decline. But, though Constantinople has 
derived little benefit as yet from the enormous 
development in the last century and a half of the 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 75 

lands about the Black Sea, its political and military 
importance has grown ever greater, for it holds the 
outlets to their sea-going commerce; and as the 
junction where that commerce crosses the new 
overland line from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf, 
it bids fair to become more important still. 

Since Emperor Constantine, not far from sixteen 
hundred years ago, founded the city that bears his 
name, it has been besieged some fourteen times by 
foreign foes and threatened on many other oc- 
casions. In all these years, it has been captured by 
them only twice: once by the Latin Crusaders in 
1204, after a feeble and inefficient defence, and 
again in 1453, after a glorious resistance against 
overwhelming forces in perhaps the most famous 
siege in history. During the first half of its exist- 
ence as the Turkish capital, it was the headquart- 
ers of a growing empire which threatened its 
neighbors, not one which was threatened by them; 
in the second half, it has been the capital of a state 
which has continually lost territory and one whose 
partition has often been discussed. The work of 
the Rumanian historian, T. G. Djuvara, Cent pro- 
jets de Portage de la Turquie (Paris, 1914) gives an 
idea of how many heirs have been suggested to the 
possessions of the sick man of Europe, and how 
Constantinople has been assigned on paper to all 
sorts of different powers, including France, Venice, 
and the Pope. Once more, and perhaps not for the 
last time, the question of its future has been raised. 
As might be expected, a number of solutions have 
been recommended and the conflict of interests 



76 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

between the different claimants is acute. Let us 
consider briefly who these claimants are and on 
what grounds their claims may be said to rest. 

We note, to begin with, that the question of the 
wishes of the inhabitants themselves can hardly be 
taken into serious consideration. At almost every 
stage of its history, Constantinople has been a 
cosmopolitan city, and this has never been truer 
than since it has been under the Ottoman empire. 
We have no real statistics as to the ethnical com- 
position of its population at the present moment. 
Not only the events of the war but those of the few 
years previous have influenced the proportion of 
the different elements. We can only say that 
recently the town has had a population of perhaps 
800,000 to 1,000,000, of whom some 400,000 were 
Turks, 150,000 or so Greeks, about as many Ar- 
menians, nearly 50,000 Jews, and the remainder a 
mixture belonging to all sorts of other nationalities 
both European and Asiatic. The inhabitants of 
the surrounding country on the European side are, 
or recently were, many of them Greeks; on the 
Asiatic side, the Turks have predominated. 

The first and at the present outlook not the most 
unlikely solution of the question of Constantinople, 
at least for the time being, is that the Turks should 
remain as before the owners and the masters of the 
city and of the Straits. There are certain advan- 
tages to this. Beati possidentes is usually the easiest 
way out of any territorial dispute, especially when 
compromise is impossible between other conflicting 
and more radical proposals. The Turks will never 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 77 

again be a serious menace to the Christian world or 
to any considerable portion of it, nor will they even 
be a power of the first rank. It will always be pos- 
sible, therefore, to put pressure on them and to 
keep them in tolerable order. With all their faults, 
they have been a ruling race, and — though opinions 
differ on this point — some authorities claim that 
they are more fitted to deal equitably with the 
mixed population under their control than the vari- 
ous other elements of that population would be to 
deal with one another if any one of them should 
obtain the supremacy. At any rate the Turks have 
the rights of an undisputed possession of more than 
four centuries and a half, and though these rights 
are regarded by the allies as forfeited, they cannot 
be overlooked except after complete victory. 

A solution that has been suggested many times 
and still has advocates in western Europe, is that 
Constantinople and a small extent of territory on 
each side of the Straits should be made a free state, 
with the proper mixture of self-government and of 
control by the Powers. This idea is at first sight 
attractive. It seems fair to every one and in har- 
mony with the most enlightened principles. The 
picture of a neutral, thriving, commercial empo- 
rium where all the elements live in concord and 
none enjoys special privileges, where the great 
nations of the world are deeply interested but none 
desires to dominate, where the Straits which have 
been the scene of so much history and the cause of 
so much bloodshed will henceforth be unfortified 
and wide open to the peaceful trade of mankind, is 



78 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

one that appeals to the imagination. The difficulty 
is that it is too imaginative. Modern democratic 
government is not so successful that we can easily 
conceive of the elements that compose the present 
population of Constantinople administering all 
their own affairs. Still less can they be entrusted 
with the management of the vast interests of others. 
It is not that they lack intelligence — many of 
them belong to highly intelligent races — but with 
their religious and national feuds, their age-long 
hatreds and rival aspirations, with the demoralizing 
effects of centuries of servitude, and their total 
lack of previous political training and of civic 
standards, they will need firm control, at least for 
some time to come. This control must be that 
of the Powers. 

But here experience does not justify optimism. 
International control of any kind is a difficult 
and delicate matter at best. The men who have 
to exercise it come from foreign states and are 
almost certain to be suspicious of one another, for 
they serve two masters. Each of them represents 
a nation, whose interests, rather than those of the 
people he is supposed to look after, are likely to be 
his first care. We may admit that there are a few 
examples of reasonably successful international 
control. The most notable of these perhaps is that 
of the navigation of the Danube; but though that 
affects important political as well as commercial 
interests, it is far less complex and difficult than 
the regulation of the Straits, which also concerns 
the actual administration of a considerable and 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 79 

very varied population. Condoniinions of even 
two powers have difficulty enough in working 
smoothly — witness the experience of England and 
France in Egypt — combinations of several are 
likely to become more unworkable with the acces- 
sion of each fresh member. In neither the Far 
nor the Near East has the concert of the Powers 
been sufficiently successful to make us sanguine 
about its efficiency as a permanent institution of 
government where important conflicting interests 
are involved. Constantinople under such a regime 
would be an ideal hotbed for intrigue of every kind 
between rival financial interests, rival nationalities, 
and representatives of rival great powers, and prob- 
ably a scene of widespread corruption. At the 
best, there would be much likelihood of adminis- 
trative stagnation, for where many jealous interests 
are involved, it is easier to block progress than to 
introduce reforms, however desirable. We must 
remember also that international law has not yet 
reached the stage when any great power, where its 
vital interests are concerned, regards the decision 
of the majority of the others as binding upon itself. 
Russia, for instance, could hardly let any mixed 
government at Constantinople pass even police 
rules which she regarded as a real hindrance to her 
Black Sea trade. 

Another point, whose difficulty is not sufficiently 
appreciated by those who favor a free city of Con- 
stantinople and free commerce for all through the 
unfortified Straits, is the distinction between times 
of peace and times of war. In times of peace it is 



80 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

practically certain in any event that commerce will 
be but little hampered and that there will be no 
discrimination of tolls. Whether the Straits are 
fortified or not does not matter, but in time of war 
it does matter, and matter a great deal. LTnforti- 
fied straits could easily be seized by a quick stroke 
at the outset of hostilities. In a war between Rus- 
sia and another power, there might be a tremendous 
temptation to both parties to make a dash for the 
Straits, enough of which might conceivably be 
occupied and held by a small force of men, with a 
combination of barbed wire and floating mines, to 
seal up the whole Russian trade in the Black Sea on 
the one hand, or, on the other, to close all entrance 
and render nugatory any maritime preponderance 
on the part of her enemies. It would, indeed, be 
hard to imagine Russia respecting the letter of the 
law under such circumstances and equally hard to 
blame her seriously for not doing so. To be sure, 
such proceedings might be forbidden by interna- 
tional compact and come under the ban of a league 
to enforce peace, and in return the Straits might be 
closed by international agreement in war time to 
the fleets of all nations, but could Russia regard 
such an agreement as an adequate protection to her 
commerce and ports ? The immense damage that 
could be inflicted upon her in a few days would be a 
temptation to an enemy that might well outweigh 
the value of any international intervention against 
the transgressor. To take a similar case, do we in 
the United States feel that an international guaran- 
tee would be sufficient to secure the Panama Canal 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 81 

against Japanese attack if we should have war with 
Japan ? The peril for Russia in an unfortified Bos- 
phorus and Dardanelles would be equally great, 
treaties to the contrary notwithstanding. Or 
again, how much protection would the neutrality 
of the Suez Canal and its legal accessibility to all 
nations even in war time, guaranteed as they are by 
treaties, furnish to a German U-boat that should be 
found there tomorrow ? 

If the Turks have the rights of the actual pos- 
sessors of Constantinople, the strongest historical 
claim is that of the Greeks. Ancient Byzantium 
was a Greek settlement, and Constantinople itself 
from the time it was founded was for over eleven 
hundred years a Greek city. Even under Turkish 
rule the Greeks have been the largest element in 
the very considerable Christian population, and the 
hope of regaining the town that was so long theirs 
has never been quite abandoned by them. The 
national awakening that led to the War of Greek 
Independence was not a movement merely to free 
ancient classical Greece, but rather one for the 
resuscitation of the Byzantine empire. The first 
actual insurrection took place, not in Greece, but 
in Rumania, where, strangely enough, the small 
number of Greeks hoped, however vainly, for the 
support of the rest of the population. After the 
War of Independence had come to an end and 
Greece proper had been freed, the majority of the 
Greek people were, to their bitter disappointment, 
left still subject to Turkish rule. But the Greeks 
are a highly imaginative and sentimental people; 



82 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

second only to their pride in the glories of the past 
is their hope of a brilliant future. ' The Great 
Idea,' as it was called, was still strong in the breasts 
of the Greeks both within and without the king- 
dom till late in the nineteenth century. This dream 
meant a new Byzantine state with a Greek Con- 
stantinople, which state should include, as it had 
in the past, various foreign elements contentedly 
living under Greek rule and superior civilization. 

In the course of the nineteenth century, the 
growth of the consciousness of the other Balkan 
nationalities, and especially of the Bulgarians, old 
enemies of the Greeks, made the fulfillment of 
' the Great Idea ' ever less and less probable; 
though even now it is not entirely abandoned, at 
least as far as Constantinople is concerned. When 
the present king of the Hellenes came to the throne, 
it was suggested that he should take the title of 
Constantine XIII, thus proclaiming himself the 
successor of Constantine XII, the ill-fated prince 
who died heroically when the Byzantine empire 
fell. The Greeks, too, resented the intimation, 
said to have been given them at one time during the 
present war, that their troops even as allies could 
not be allowed to approach Constantinople. Never 
indeed has the fulfilment of ' the Great Idea ' 
looked less likely than at the present moment. It 
should be remembered, however, that if Constan- 
tinople becomes a free state, Greek is likely to be 
its official language and the one spoken by the 
majority of the population, especially if, as we may 
expect, many of the Turks and other Mohammed- 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 83 

ans leave. The world, therefore, may after all see 
Constantinople again in the hands, not of Greece, 
but of Greeks. 

Their ancient foes, the Bulgarians, have no his- 
torical claim on the city, much as they have 
desired to obtain possession of it at times in the past. 
Twice they have besieged it — in the ninth cen- 
tury, when they made their first appearance in the 
Balkan Peninsula, and again in the tenth, when 
they were at the height of their power. But if they 
have no historical claim, they have an excellent 
geographical reason for desiring the place. Now 
that Bulgaria has shores on both the Black Sea and 
the Aegean, the northern coasts of the Straits and 
of the Sea of Marmora seem a bit cut out of the 
Bulgarian coastline and spoiling its continuity. 
Constantinople would be a magnificent acquisition 
for the Bulgarians, and though but few of them are 
to be found there at present, in time they could 
doubtless colonize it and make it in every way an 
integral part of their possessions, realizing at last 
the dreams of a thousand years ago. This possi- 
bility naturally appeals to them, and we may well 
believe that their statesmen cherish hopes of the 
sort, though hardly for the immediate future. In 
the war of 1912, for a moment it seemed as if the 
Bulgarians after their decisive victories over the 
Turks might enter the imperial city in triumph. 
Had they done so, they would have hoped to 
remain. It is still a question whether it was Turk- 
ish resistance at Chataldja or pressure on the part 
of Russia that put an end to the Bulgarian advance. 



84 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

In 1915 the news, or the suspicion, that France and 
England had consented to the occupation of Con- 
stantinople by Russia as a result of the present war, 
provoked much feeling in Bulgaria, and was doubt- 
less one of the motives that influenced her to throw 
in her lot with the Central Powers. As matters now 
stand, next to the Turks the Bulgarians would prob- 
ably be the German candidates for its possession. 

Serbia has been too far away to have been a real 
aspirant for the succession, even if some Serbian 
patriots have dreamed of a southern Slav state, 
that is to say, a predominately Serbian one that 
should extend to the Straits. The Serbians them- 
selves have never penetrated thus far. Their great- 
est sovereign, Stephen Dushan, at the time of his 
death in 1355 was preparing for a campaign against 
Constantinople, and Serbians and some western 
writers have declared that but for his decease the 
history of the East would have been changed and 
the Turks would have been driven out of Europe. 
Such assertions are easier to make than to prove. 

The Russian claims to Constantinople are nu- 
merous and weighty. They are both sentimental 
and practical, they are based on historical tradi- 
tions, on the national sentiment and aspirations of 
the Russian people and on geographical, political, 
and economic reasons of ever growing importance. 

To begin with the sentimental reasons, we must 
remember that as soon as the Russian state was 
constituted, and even sooner, the Russians began 
to look to the south. Descending the rivers that 
flowed into the Black Sea, they attacked the 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 85 

Greeks more or less seriously again and again. One 
of their rulers in the tenth century was so pleased 
with the lands he had conquered in the Balkan 
Peninsula, that he proposed making them his head- 
quarters and residence for the future. This design 
he was forced to give up only after hard fighting 
with one of the ablest of the Byzantine emperors, 
who did not relish having such a formidable neigh- 
bor so near his capital. It was from Constanti- 
nople that Russia got her religion, and with her 
religion many of her clergy, for a considerable 
period, also her introduction into civilization and 
all her earlier culture. To the Russian world, Con- 
stantinople long had an importance the same in 
kind, if not in degree, that Rome had for western 
Christendom. When the Byzantine empire fell, 
the Russians found themselves the last independent 
people in Europe belonging to the Greek — to them 
the only orthodox — church. All their brethren in 
the faith were then under the rule of foreigners, 
either heretics or infidels. No wonder that the le- 
gend grew up that as Constantinople had been the 
second Rome on the Bosphorus, so Moscow was the 
third, the legitimate successor to the two elder capi- 
tals of the world. The princes of Moscow, as might 
be expected, favored this idea. One of them, Ivan 
the Great, not only adopted the Byzantine double- 
headed eagle for his coat of arms, which has re- 
mained that of Russia till today, but he married a 
Greek princess, the niece of the last Byzantine 
emperor. Since that time, the desire to reerect the 
cross on the ancient cathedral, now the Mosque of 



86 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

St. Sofia, has been a Russian aspiration which has 
varied in intensity at different periods, but which 
in the course of the ages has grown stronger rather 
than weaker. For the Russian people every Turk- 
ish war has been a crusade. In the cosmopolitan 
days of the eighteenth century, the Empress 
Catherine II might plan a revived Byzantine 
empire provided her grandson should rule over it, 
but in these more nationalistic ones, the thought 
that Russia shall some day succeed the Turk on 
the shores of the Bosphorus has become a part of 
the popular creed. In this respect, Russian rulers 
and statesmen have lagged behind rather than led 
public opinion. They have seen the difficulties 
that were involved in an aggressive policy, and some 
of them have doubted the advantages to be obtained 
from a realization of the national aims. 1 

But apart from sentimental considerations, rea- 
sons of the most practical nature have pointed out 
with increasing force to the statesmen of Petrograd 
the importance of the Straits. Peter the Great 
began his extraordinary career by an attempt to get 
a footing on waters leading to the Black Sea. By 
his capture of Azov he succeeded for the moment; 
but he was obliged to surrender his prize after his 
unsuccessful war with Turkey a few years later. It 
was not until the reign of Catherine II that the 
Russians were able to establish themselves on these 

1 Prince Bismarck was convinced, or at least more than once 
declared, that the possession of Constantinople would weaken rather 
than strengthen the Russian empire. It is true that he made the 
same sort of an observation in regard to the German possession of 
Helgoland. 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 87 

coveted coasts. They proceeded at once to build a 
fleet, but as it had to meet enemies who could get 
help from outside while it could not, it seldom had 
an undisputed supremacy, a fact that has often 
hampered the Russians in their Turkish campaigns. 
Conversely, under the existing international regu- 
lations regarding the Straits, they were unable to 
send their Black Sea fleet to the Far East during 
their conflict with Japan. 

Meanwhile, in the course of the last century and 
a half, southern Russia has undergone as complete 
a transformation as our own West. The wild 
steppes, the former home of the Tartar and of the 
Cossack, have become some of the chief wheat pro- 
ducing lands in the world. Many towns have 
grown up, and there is now a large and in some 
places even a dense population. The city of 
Odessa alone has over 600,000 inhabitants. All 
the rivers of southern Russia empty into the Black 
Sea, except the Volga, which is connected with it 
by a railway and some day may h>e by a canal. The 
whole foreign trade of this region, the immense 
Russian export of wheat, as well as that of oil and 
of other products from the region of the Caucasus, 
reaches the western world by sea only by passing 
through Turkish waters in passages controlled by 
Turkish guns. The more the vast country has been 
developed, the more Russian commerce has grown, 
the greater have been the inconveniences and dis- 
advantages of having its outlet at the mercy of the 
politics of the Ottoman empire. It has been even 
more serious than a foreign owned Panama Canal 



88 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

would be to the United States. The Turks tem- 
porarily closed the Straits at the time of the war 
between Italy and Tripoli and again during the 
Balkan wars, and again in 1914 before they actually 
joined with the Central Powers, each time causing 
heavy losses to Russian commerce. At this mo- 
ment, when France and England are having diffi- 
culty in finding sufficient grain to meet their urgent 
wants, there are huge quantities of Russian wheat 
locked up in the Black Sea and doomed to remain 
so until peace is once more restored or the Turks 
are driven from Constantinople. The object les- 
son to Russia of the importance of the control of 
the Straits is drastic. Mere freedom will not be 
enough for her; as long as she is not able actually 
to close what she regards more and more as the 
door of her house, so long will she have to keep up a 
fleet in the Black Sea and to spend millions on the 
fortification of her harbors against possible attack 
by an enemy with a navy superior to her own, and 
yet be in danger of having her door hermetically 
sealed from outside at any time. To sum up then: 
from almost every point of view, the control, that 
is to say the possession, of these passages is of 
transcendent importance to Russia, and this her 
allies have realized, and have promised that if they 
are victorious she shall receive it. 

The concern of Germany, not only of Austria but 
of all southern Germany, in the question of the 
Straits, was long due almost entirely to the fact 
that the Danube, the upper half of which is Ger- 
man, empties into the Black Sea. As the trade of 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 89 

this splendid navigable river has increased and as 
the populations along its banks have grown and 
developed, the Black Sea and the passages leading 
into it have come to mean more and more to Aus- 
tria and Germany. At various times in the past 
Austria has had thoughts of extending her territory 
to the eastward by the annexation of Rumania and 
thus becoming directly a Black Sea power, but she 
has made no serious attempt to carry out such a 
policy. She has, however, especially since the days 
of the Crimean War, regarded herself as a state 
with interests which must be consulted in Black 
Sea questions, including those of the Straits. 

Modern Germany at first showed little interest 
in the politics of the Near East. Bismarck's views 
on the subject are well known. It is only since the 
accession of the present emperor that the policy of 
peaceful penetration of the Ottoman empire has 
been followed, at first on a small scale, later with 
ever increasing energy, breadth of vision, and 
realization of its importance. Germany has thus 
succeeded to the place, formerly held by England 
and France, of protector of the Ottoman em- 
pire against the encroachments of Russia. She 
has proclaimed herself the one great power that 
has never taken Turkish territory and never had 
designs on any, whose only aim has been close eco- 
nomic relations equally favorable to both parties. 
For twenty years before the outbreak of the present 
war, German influence at Constantinople was be- 
coming more and more the dominant one, politic- 
ally as well as commercially. Since about the 



90 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

beginning of the present century, the most inter- 
esting and picturesque feature of the German plan 
of action has been the Bagdad railway, the main line 
of which, according to latest reports, is nearly com- 
pleted. Starting at Constantinople, it should in 
time not only connect Central Europe with Bagdad, 
but should extend down to the Persian Gulf, with 
branches towards Persia and India to the east, and 
towards Syria and Egypt to the west. Unwelcome 
as this enterprise has been to Germany's rivals, it 
has been a fine conception, perfectly legitimate in 
itself, and we can understand the increasing inter- 
est that it has excited in Germany. 

The events of the present war have much height- 
ened this interest. The Germans have now lost 
almost the whole of their colonies, and it is doubt- 
ful whether they will regain them. On the other 
hand, their policy and arms in the Near East have 
so far been generally successful. 1 These two sets of 
facts have reacted on German feeling. The Ger- 
mans have seen the fragility of their colonial 
dominion and their inability to defend it against 
England, but they believe that in this day of world 
empires every great state needs a large mass of ter- 
ritory at its own disposal, to furnish it with raw 
material for its industries, with a field for the em- 
ployment of its capital, and a population to buy its 
manufactures. They now dream of a unified 
Central Europe and Western Asia, an area whose 
different parts shall be under different but closely 
allied governments, and shall constitute an eco- 

1 Written before the fall of Bagdad. 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 91 

nomic unity, with well on to two hundred million 
inhabitants and vast and varied resources, extend- 
ing from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. To 
many Germans this seems the one chance to assure 
themselves of their place in the sun, to give them- 
selves the room that they need for the unhampered 
development of their energies and abilities, to 
secure permanently among the world powers the 
position to which by their achievement in peace 
and war they are legitimately entitled. 

Whatever may be said for or against this vision, 
it is evident that in its realization Constantinople 
plays a part of the first importance. The train 
from Berlin to Bagdad must pass through or near 
Constantinople, and at this point it will cross the 
great stream of the Black Sea trade, a meeting 
place that should be one of the chief commercial 
stations in the world. Thus the question of who 
shall control the station and the highways of pas- 
sage north and south, east and west, becomes more 
critical than ever. We can see that if Russia should 
get possession of them the project of a German 
union from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf would 
be shattered beyond repair. On the other hand, a 
German Constantinople, or a Turkish one directed 
and controlled by Germany, would prove a barrier 
to Russian aspirations more formidable than that 
of the Turks at the height of their power. The sea- 
going commerce of southern Russia, the Caucasus, 
and Central Asia would pass through German 
waters, through gates that could be opened or 
closed at any time according to the good will of 



92 CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 

the Germans. Thus the fulfilment of either the 
Russian or the German dream can only be achieved 
by the ruin of the other. 

This would seem to drive us back to some other 
solution if we hope for a compromise of any kind. 
We may imagine what would be the rivalry be- 
tween the German and the Russian agents in a free 
city. It has been suggested in the past that, small 
as the disputed territory is, it should be divided. 
For instance, Napoleon I, as a last concession to his 
ally, Tsar Alexander I, was willing that Constanti- 
nople and the Bosphorus should go to the Russians, 
provided that France might hold the Dardanelles. 
This the Russians refused. From their point of 
view, although the possession of the Bosphorus 
would enable them to defend the Black Sea better 
than they can today, its exit would be closed just as 
effectually by a foe holding the Dardanelles alone 
as by one that held both passages. Rather than 
have a great state establish itself there, they pre- 
ferred and would prefer the present weak holder for 
the whole region, and Germany has the same feel- 
ing with respect to Russia to an even greater 
degree. Other divisions have been suggested: for 
instance, that some one state should hold the 
European side and another the Asiatic side of 
the passage, and even that Constantinople itself 
should be divided between the different claimants. 
Perhaps the next proposition will be that the 
Russians shall have Constantinople and the 
Straits, and the German railway shall go under 
them somewhere by a tunnel. 



CLAIMANTS TO CONSTANTINOPLE 93 

Be all this as it may, we can see that the problem 
is one that can never be solved in a manner agree- 
able to all parties concerned. We can look at it 
from many points of view and feel some sympathy 
with the most diverse aspirations. At the present 
moment the predominant feature in the situation 
is a very new thing in the hoary Eastern Question, 
the clash between the interests and we may say the 
legitimate ambitions of Russia and Germany, a 
clash where both sides have much at stake, where 
a compromise will be difficult to reach and to main- 
tain, and where a complete victory for either means 
a blow of great severity to its antagonist. Never 
in all its long history, save perhaps when it fell 
into the hands of the Turks in 1453, has the fate 
of Constantinople meant more to the world than 
it does in the present struggle. 



PRINTED AT 

THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., V. 8. A. 



JAN 161548 




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